Are You Up For It?

Well, are you? You may have heard of this initiative already but October is Buy Nothing New month. You pledge to buy nothing new (apart from the essentials of food, drink, medicine and hygiene) and reap the rewards of a lower environmental footprint, more cash in your pocket and perhaps a large swathe of smug self-satisfaction. Rather than me rehashing the whole website go here to get the scoop. It’s something that appealed to Nicky and I immediately and we have stuck our necks out and signed up to pledge.

Is it just me or do you agree that as you get older you realize that the most joyous moments of life often come from the simplest (and often cost negligible) things. A bumper sticker I saw recently declared “The best things in life aren’t things” and that resonated with me.

Here’s an example - on the weekend, along with many Sydneysiders scrambling to enjoy the first teasings of summer, I sat on the beach doing nothing more than skimming the newspaper and eating an apple and it was, quite frankly, the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Here’s another one – it’s become a running joke between Nicky and I about how much we love using leftovers from our respective houses to eat at work together the next day rather than dropping $12 on an average salad or sandwich at the coffee shops down the road. Who would have thought a Mexican chicken quinoa salad could cause so much excitement but there we were exclaiming how excited we were to have a new leftover meal on the menu. Just call us Mrs and Ms Scrooge.

I am not sure if it is age, the after effects of the GFC or out-and-out necessity that is driving me this way but I hanker after the simpler life. Not in a “give it all up and find myself while meditating on a mountaintop in Tibet” kind of way but just less. Less spending, less debt, less consuming for the sake of consuming. It’s not easy doing that in a place such as Sydney (goodness knows I went a bit mad at the North Bondi markets last weekend) but for me, getting off the treadmill of acquisition, is where I would like to be heading. I am realistic enough to know that I will always enjoy a shopping splurge now and then but I really enjoy making conscious decisions about what I want to spend my dollars on. In my own small way – saying no gives me a powerful buzz!

So mull on that for the week, readers, and see if you are up for the challenge – can your curb your consumer cravings? Well, one month at a time anyway. Will let you know how WE go!

Caring for the Carers

The world is so out of whack isn’t it? I was watching a news article on television the other day about caregivers to the elderly and disabled and about how they are trying to negotiate a minuscule payrise. Contrast that to the bulging paychecks of the financial and legal community and it doesn’t take long to get a rather nasty taste in your mouth.

What’s more galling is that seemingly you don’t even have to perform well to get your payrise, bonus, share options and other perks of office. Let alone even be held to account in any shape or form for blowing up companies through bad management, excessive debt and downright greed. The court cases take forever, if they are ever started at all after all the toing and froing between lawyers who split hairs over details of what their defendants did or not do. Then, like magicians they reinvent themselves and reappear in another role somewhere else with barely a dent in their well-oiled armour and a new juicy package to boot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah! They’re smart, they work hard, they’re away from their families more than most, blah blah blah. Cry me the proverbial river.

Ok, it’s unrealistic to expect that those in professions who truly make a difference in people’s lives – nurses and caregivers, teachers, childcare workers – will ever be rewarded on par with someone employed in an investment bank or public company. But why does it have to be like getting blood out of a stone when it comes to giving these people a payrise? Surely they deserve it?

I know we are talking in general about the government funding these incremental payrises and when I say the government, of course, I mean you and me via our taxes. I’m not pretending that it is an easy task to run and manage the budget of a hospital or school. On the other hand, I don’t know many taxpayers who would begrudge an improvement in the balancing act of the wages of caregivers versus money spent on some ridiculous initiative after intense lobbying by some obscure group hellbent on receiving funding.

Aarggghh…life is so damn complex. I’m probably opening a can of worms with my rant. I know there are many more shades of grey to this issue that I can adequately present in my short blog. By their very nature blogs are a window into what one is thinking about at a particular time. By their very nature they are transient and ephemeral. But there you have it, for what it’s worth, a window into my mind one night this week.