THE VALUE OF THINGS

I'm attempting not to use my debit card for the rest of the month. I don't have any credit cards (I don't like debt) which means of course that I'm down to using just plain old cash.

How jolly old-fashioned.

The reason for all of this is that I don't want to lose sight of how much things cost. It's an experiment.

It's so easy to tap at the contactless payment thing, or slide a card into a machine, sometimes none-the-wiser as to whether or not you've paid over the odds. When it's just numbers, it's difficult to quantify - but when you have to count out notes or coins, you get a much better sense.

So far I've realised I can do a lot better than I have been doing. The first challenge was food shopping. Somehow, with a keen sense of frugality, I managed to supplement things I already had in the cupboard and found a way to get everything I needed for not very much at all. Why can't I do that every week?

The rest is just choosing the wise thing - no visits to the coffee van, no trips to Starbucks, and no KitKats from the old vending machine.

In addition, I walked to work this morning. It was so nice - sun flicking through the trees, cool summer breeze under the bluest of skies. My intention is to do the same again tomorrow if I can. As you know it takes an hour and a quarter to walk in, these days. But I've got a quarter of a tank of petrol to last until September.

I think it's okay to remind yourself of the value of things. Living in the West desensitizes us to the real cost of items we take for granted. I don't want to be like that. I want to remember that money is more than just numbers.

Another interesting side-effect of course, is that living off a really tight budget forces you to be more organised. This is a great skill, and one I need to be better at.

This morning, rather than throwing on clothes and stumbling to the car, I had to carefully plan my work clothes, load them into my rucksack, find a bottle of water, make sure I had shorts and t-shirt ready, along with my hiking boots, and then carefully pack everything so that it wasn't too heavy. I had to leave much earlier of course, and I had to make sure the bins were out long before leaving the house.

Luxury gives us the freedom to be lazy. It introduces flexibility into our lives which lets us get fat, eating crisps from the sofa. Or in other words, a billionaire is never all that far away from a penthouse suite in a top hotel and has no earthly need to know how to pitch a tent or perhaps, pay a gas bill.

It's a slightly peculiar analogy but you get my meaning. I'm not loaded but my life normally allows me to slip into bad habits because my resources make it possible.

This is a good experiment for me then. Will I make it to the end of the month with the few pounds I've got left in my pocket? Will I plan when to use the car and when to walk? Will I avoid the snacking temptations? I hope so. But above all, I hope I learn something.