I think I’ve become an unintentional Compacter! For those of you who don’t know, Compactors are people who strive to reduce their environmental impact and increase their frugality by not buying anything new (except for food and health/safety items). I looked at my Excel document of expenses for 2007, and here’s everything I’ve bought:
- Gas for my car, 3 times (most Compacters try not to drive, but that’s impossible in my area, and I haven’t been driving very much)
- Clothes ($3.00 for the sales tax when I used a gift card)
- Netflix (one month, I signed up for it to get $20.00 back from CashDuck)
- Groceries
- Car payments (on my used car)
- Credit card payments
- Car wash (to keep the salt from the roads from eating my car alive)
- One garbage plate (it’s food… sort of!)
The new clothes, the Netflix, and the car wash might not fit exactly into the Compacting mentality, but then again, I wasn’t trying!
I think from now on, I’m going to continue my “loose compacting,” regardless of how much money I have coming in. Not buying anything new reduces my environmental impact and my clutter, and it leaves me more money to pay down my credit card debt. So, I’m going to Compact (sort of) until that debt is gone!
It’s good that you didn’t bought anything that you don’t need. I guess it’s the way to survive in this credit cards/offers world.
Someone says that if he don’t use it, he had enough money for the rest of his life”.
Between that and waste all our money there’s a huge scale…
Hey! I found out your blog in a local newspaper here in Spain, in an article about the new kind of blogs, specially those that talk about domestic financial problems. I just want to say that I like your blog a lot, it captures our daily reality.
Keep going on!
Mirko and Esther: Thank you! Encouragement from new readers is one of my favorite aspects of having this blog!
lmao @ garbage plate. Thats such a NY thing lol.
Garbage plates are, by definition, gross. I’ve only had three in my whole life. One when I was very young, one this past November, and the one last week. I didn’t even eat last week’s by myself – two other people helped.
It’s basically a “drunk food,” because you have to be in a certain state of mind for it to sound tasty!
Yeah you wont find those in California. lol
Garbage plates are financially sound investments, although health-wise, very bad. π
Compacting sounds like a good idea as long as you can keep a balance ???
Never heard of the idea before, I’m taking note
I think compacting is a great idea, as is buying second hand and taking care of posessions to reduce impact on evironment and waste in general. however I personally love going on holiday, particularly to Spain’s fantastic Canary islands, so probably all my efforts in conservation throughout the year are totally blown by those flights to Spain!
Wow, you bought gas only 3x in 2007?!? Thats not loose compacting thats super compacting.
Nicholas’s last blog post..The Security Provided By Auto Bill Of Sale Forms
@Nicholas – I wish I could say you were right, but if you look at the date at the top of the post, you’ll see it was written in February of 2007 – meaning I filled up 3 times in January/February of 2007, not 3 times for the whole year.
Thanks for coming by the site!