In my “debut” post 2 years ago, I discussed my wife’s and my aversion to having children.  This past weekend we talked about this again and are still fairly steadfast in maintaining our childless household.  This is kind of an amusing viewpoint to have, as I am writing this post while going to see my new niece, just born an hour ago (apparently my brother doesn’t really agree with me and my views on children as this is his second girl born in 17 months).  My wife and I spent the weekend with our nephews, aged 8 and 4 and after we were done playing with them (which was fun) we were both very happy for the quiet ride home.

In the past two years, my views haven’t really changed around having kids although I think my reasons have a little bit.  In my first article, I wrote about how expensive kids would be and how it would limit my chances of retiring early.  Since then, I have come to believe that kids are as expensive as you make them.  If you go out and outfit an entire room with fancy furniture, buy disposable diapers, and attempt to buy your kid a good childhood, then I could see how having children could easily approach the average cost of $250,000 I quoted in my original post.  Otherwise, I think costs could be kept down fairly low.

Where my views have changed, beyond my own personal preference to be free to do what I want to do when I want to do it (maintaining what could be called a selfish lifestyle) I really don’t know why I would add to the population.  The UN recently had a huge celebration that we as a species have achieved a population of 7 billion people.  For me to make a decision to add to this, is essentially being selfish.  I can’t really see how me and my wife adding to the population is really going to help anything.  The only reason I would be having a kid is because I would want one, as the choice is available.  Everyone out there adding to the 7 billion people on the planet is basically saying “What’s one more person?”

I’m not getting all Malthusian here or anything, I’m sure that we’ll somehow figure out a way to get more food for the next 7 billion people on the planet – I’m simply saying that, from the standpoint of the species as a whole maybe we should calm down a little bit in our population growth.  I don’t think the addition of another few billion people is going to have a positive effect on the planet, but nobody really talks about that (I’m going to say that population control is not a very popular campaign to run on).

So, no real change here, from my wife or myself.  We love kids, we just love to be done with them after a visit.  We are enjoying our freedom, and the maintenance of our DINK status.

I understand that this is kind of a charged subject, but my question of the day is can you see how down the road the planet will be a better place if we maintain our current level of growth?  Thinking of this, would you think twice before adding to this growth?

So I’ve decided to end my suffering and get rid of every damn blade of grass in my front yard.  Yet to keep the costs low and my sanity in tact, this will be done over a number of years.  Right now this year’s project is getting the design done and getting some trees planted.  Since I don’t want to spend a small fortune to just get rid of my lawn, I’m going to do this the smart way and keep my costs as low as reasonable.  Yet I also fully accept the fact that while lawn is cheap to put in and expensive to keep up, just about everything else is the opposite: expensive to put in and cheap to keep up.

First up is saving on the design.  I’m rather lucky that my mother happens to have a talent for landscaping design.  So I invited her over and had a discussion between her, my wife and me.  From there she is going to outline a draft design, which we will fine tune and most importantly, get those trees in the ground this year.  The reason I want a few trees is two fold: first to have something to shade my south facing living room which can get fairly hot in the summer and to also have something to shade the patio I want to put out front.

Then I will also do some research this year on plants I want to put in the costs associated with them and other landscaping materials.  I also want to work in some eatable plants into the design, so at least I can get something useful out of my front yard rather than the endless watering and cutting of my lawn that I currently do.

So have you ever gone lawn free in part of your yard?  If so, how much did it cost?  If not, would you ever consider getting rid of your lawn?

My wife and I were at a friend’s place over the long weekend for a tobogganing party.  Temperatures in the last week made the tobogganing sub-par, but I was able to build a fairly good fort with the kids that were there (it was good igloo snow).  My wife and I normally get together with this set of friends every 6 to 8 weeks to have some laughs, play some board games and just hang out.  Some of these friends I have known for around 20 years, and we have stayed close the entire time.

My wife and I were talking about where we were going to live when we retired.  I jokingly told a couple of my friends that I was going to put up a tiny house in their back yard.  We talked about this for a little bit, with my wife still not really all that excited about this idea (or many of the others).

My friends kids are 7 and 3 right now, but we said that those ages worked out just about right to match our retirement date – we could move into one of their kid’s rooms.  I wouldn’t say that this is a concrete plan by any means, and I wouldn’t say that these friends are particularly in favour of this living arrangement, but in general (to me anyways) this type of living arrangement makes a lot of sense for older adults.  I can see the following as benefits:

Lower cost per person to live – Costs which are essentially fixed, like heating, property taxes, delivery charges for water, electricity and gas (which make up the majority of my household utility costs) would be significantly reduced.

More efficient use of space – Rather than having a total of 3,000 square feet of space for 4 adults in two houses, resulting in significant waste, both financially as well as space.  I don’t need that much space and I think that generally speaking most people don’t – cutting housing down by half would limit this waste.

Easier social interactions – Much like University, it is much easier to hang out if you don’t have to travel a significant period of time (or at all) to do.

The problem that I can see in living with a bunch of adults is the same problem that came up during school with a bunch of people – there will be days that people will not get along.  I didn’t really have any problems myself, but I saw what could happen between roommates, which did not always end very well.

Personally, I would prefer to have my own space in a Tiny house, but cohabitating is another option and would require significantly less cost and fewer resources.

Would you, or could you live together with friends?  What could you see as potential problems?

Last week, Sir Ken Robinson was in Red Deer as part of the local teachers’ convention. The teachers made an evening session available to the public. If you are not familiar with Sir Ken (@SirKenRobinson for those on Twitter), he gave a very popular TED Talk in 2006 entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”. It’s available on ted.com and on YouTube. He has been a teacher, professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick and he has mentored the Oklahoma Creativity Project.

Sir Ken Robinson is an amazing speaker and it was a real treat to see him live. The entire hour was inspiring, and I wanted to share one tidbit today. Sir Ken said:

The population on Earth is almost 7 billion and will approach 9 billion by 2030. For context, that’s almost 10% of the number of humans that have ever lived (by most estimates). The maximum population of the Earth, at the consumption rate of the average Rwandan, is 15 billion. However, the maximum population at the consumption rate of the average North American: 1.7 billion.

I can’t verify these statistics, so I’m going to take his word for it. After all, it seems believable that North Americans spend almost 10 times the average Rwandan. And if everyone were to spend like an inhabitant of North America, it’s easy to believe that we would soon run out of resources. What are some things we can do to reduce our consumption of the world’s limited resources?

Sir Ken specifically mentioned that fast food is one of the least efficient ways to feed people. For the family that cooks at home, the food is generally higher quality. It is also lower in fats and salt, making it healthier. Chances are that it costs less money and it provides some family time to sit down and connect at meal time.

Clothes, if properly cared for, can last years. For adults, this means only shopping for new clothes rarely, while preferring higher quality. At the same time, it means having items that can be combined into a variety of outfits. People in Rwanda don’t even have that luxury.

Can you manage with one car instead of two? While there are occasional inconveniences in a city not planned for pedestrian traffic or even public transit outside of the core, it is very possible for our family to manage with a single vehicle. (I admit, it’s a minivan). This reduces our impact on the environment, it reduces our spending to buy a vehicle and it reduces regular costs in fuel, insurance and maintenance.

We are fortunate to have many entertainment options available to us. While it’s fun to see a movie, it’s something we rarely pay for. For one thing, it’s hardly worth it with kids. For another, we can get all the books and DVDs we want for free from the library. We have a playground near our house and a small lake in the community. Most of our family activities are done for little or no cost, and they have the additional benefit of taking us out in our community where we can meet our neighbours.

Keeping our consumption in check is helpful in making progress toward financial goals. But it also feels like the ethical thing to do, given the global context of people who simply cannot afford our lifestyle and the limited resources that we all share. How do you keep your consumption in control? What motivates you?

Both my own and my wife’s family really don’t know how we’re able to live without it, but since we moved into our new house we’ve gotten by without a dryer pretty easily.  We talked about buying one at the same time that we bought our washing machine (there were no appliances in the house we bought), but decided to try to live without it and see how it went.  After 20 months, I think I can comfortably say that we don’t really need it.

Rather than spending the money on a dryer and the constant electricity it eats up, we spent $12 on a retractable clothes line for our basement.  I don’t need to worry about lint fires (something that caused one of my wife’s friend’s houses to burn down this winter), upkeep (other than perhaps a new $12 line) or breakdowns with my “old-school” system.

Living without a dryer (especially after having grown up with one) has meant some logistics needed to be taken into consideration, especially in the winter, when things take an extra day or so to dry.  One solution to this was to actually buy more clothes and linen, especially items that need washing more frequently such as clothes I wear to the gym and towels.  The downside of not having a dryer that my wife and I both miss is fluffy towels, which is now a luxury when we go to other people’s places or hotels, but is basically the only major thing that we miss from not having this appliance readily available.

So, is this a world-changing sacrifice, giving up the convenience of this appliance?  Not really at all, but I figure it saved me a few hundred dollars on the initial purchase (or less if I bought used) and probably $100-$200 per year to run it.  Not having a dryer by itself would not make or break my monthly budget, but as a part of a money-saving plan this is one of the many areas that we looked at that has reduced our monthly expenses to as low as we couple possibly get them.

Would I recommend our laundry system to everyone?  There’s only my wife and I in our house, so our laundry needs are not too large, but I think it would be easily done for a large family – in fact I know it’s possible because up until the last hundred years or so people did not have the option of plugging something in to cut the drying time down for their clothes.   I think that most families had more children per family then today and I think that people survived by line-drying.

Electrical smart-meters are being implemented in the coming months in my city, as in most Canadian cities.  Reading about other people’s experiences (which on a whole are not positive) I’m thinking that having one less large appliance adding to my energy costs is not going to be a bad thing.

Could you give up your dryer?  How about your washing machine?  How have you tried to cut back on electricity expenses?

You know what, I don’t know other than the usual excuses like:

• I used it once in a while…typically when I haven’t washed the other three yet.
• I might use it for [insert lame reason]….what a cereal bowl won’t work for that? Or perhaps just wash one of the three bowls.
• My wife’s “It’s a set.”  No comment if I want to stay married.

So this leads me to a theory about the average household in North America when push comes to shove we could likely live our entire lives with just half of the things we currently own.  This isn’t to say that you should throw out half of your stuff and immediately move to a house with half the square footage.  Yet you should at least question why you are keeping all your presents beyond the fact it was a present.

The idea of the gift if more important that the gift itself.  It’s okay to immediately donate or sell something you know you will never use or return it for something else.  I’ve started to get really good with this and the toys our boys get.  For example, my one son got a piece of a train set from one friend, but during a recent purge we decided our boys only need one type of train set and having three in the house was getting out of hand.  So we asked for a gift receipt and returned it for a train of the set they do have.  He also got a movie of show he loves.  So all in all the kid is happier and we also keep less stuff in the house that won’t be used.  Was it hard to ask: yes, at first, but it was worth it in the end.

If you can do that you might be ready to look at your closets and drawers and defend to yourself by asking ” Why do I need this?”  It’s a skill that takes time to develop, but avoiding more stuff and getting rid of stuff can be useful for saving money and retiring a little bit earlier.

So do you keep all your gifts or are you good at returning things you don’t want or need?  Or do you give up and just lie about already having one so you can return it?

Earlier this week, it cost me $15 to buy a new watch band for my Timex digital watch.  I had to call directly to Timex to order it, because a replacement band was not available at retail stores.  The $15 I paid for a new band would have been about half the amount I would spend on a new watch to replace the five-year old watch.  It doesn’t really make sense to replace the band, given the cost of a replacement, but if I didn’t replace it, there’s really nothing to do with the watch at all, other than to throw it out (or alternatively let it sit somewhere until the battery dies in a couple of years not getting any use).

In the same vein, the set of hair clippers that I’ve owned for several years has a missing guard, something that happened during my move last year.  A new set of hair clippers is reasonably cheap (less than $30), but much like my watch, there would be a perfectly good product that would most likely go to a landfill because I’m not sure anyone would want a used set of hair clippers.  Ideally, I wouldn’t have lost the part, but a replacement part can be purchased for $10.

There are a myriad of products out there that are essentially disposable due to replacement parts being just as expensive to buy as the product itself (think printer cartridges).  What these products create is a lot of waste, as most people, including myself would rather pay a few extra dollars to get something new than keep the old product, which has a higher probability of breaking.  Over the last couple of years I have tried to reduce my waste as much as possible. I realize that a set of hair clippers and a watch really wouldn’t have that much of an impact on our landfills, but if applied across everything I owned, there would be a lot less waste created.

I’m just not sure where to draw the line – right now, the items that I’m “saving” are things that I use regularly and are easily (and cheaply) fixed;  the car decision comes due to my recent decision to replace our car in the spring of next year, as well as the fact it can be sold.

How do you decide what to throw out and what to keep?  Have you been burned by fixing something that broke again shortly after?

• It was cheaper:  My wife and I have significantly increased our meat consumption over the past few months, as I discussed in a previous post around paleo/primal eating.  Eating this way was having a very positive impact on our health, but was significantly more expensive than eating beans and rice a few days a week.  The $4 per pound its cost is less than the majority of cuts of meat we were able to find at the store, even when it was on sale.

• I know where my food comes from: I visited the farm where my meat came from and seen the herd that my animal was coming from.  When we went and picked up our frozen meat, we were given a tour of the farm.  We walked the pasture that the animals were grazing in, discussed with the farmer his philosophy on the business he was in and saw the condition that my food grew in.  Couple this experience to what I had been eating – that meat had probably grown up in something like this, which requires significant antibiotics.  Likely because of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions and also because the grains that the cattle are being fed make the animals sick.  Instead my beef had never been given drugs – it grew up on a pasture with plenty of room.

• My beef is “green”: Part of the problem with conventional farming is that it requires significant resources to produce a pound of meat.  It takes a lot of energy to create the grains that are fed to livestock.  The growing of the grains have a significant impact on the environment from tilling of the land, as well as the inputs such as seed, fertilizer, and pesticides.  At some point in the future this is going to become a significant problem, which is discussed in two books I’ve read “The Vegetarian Myth” and  “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization”.  Instead I bought grass-fed and grass finished-meat.  The grass just keeps growing with little inputs.  When talking to the farmer while walking through his field, he noted that the land we were walking on was essentially bare 2 years ago when he started farming.  Currently, it is an incredibly lush pasture that supports his herd of cattle – this farmer is actually helping the land rather than removing needed topsoil.

• It is Healthier : Grass-fed beef has been found to have a higher quantity of conjugated lineolic acid, which is thought to have anti-cancer properties.

These were the main reasons why I bought the beef from where I did.  As a side-note, if you were to purchase the same amount of meat from a farmer who raised their animals in a grain-fed feedlot, you could save approximately 50% over what I spent.  So, although the beef I bought was significantly cheaper than what can be found at the grocery store, it is possible to find cheaper meat straight from the farm.  I chose to pay a premium for grass-fed beef because of the reasons noted above.

Do you buy your meat in bulk?  Do you take an interest in where your food comes from?  Do you pay a premium for organic or other specialized food?

I had asked my brother what kind of diaper he was going to use with his new baby on the way.  He didn’t even think and answered disposables.

I questioned why he made this decision, to which I received the answer “because it’s easier”.

I asked him if he had looked into the cost of cloth diapers vs. disposables or any sort of analysis beyond the simplicity factor, to which I received a negative response.

At this point, because we were at a golf course on father’s day I left the point alone – until the car ride home when I went over the conversation with my wife and noted (even though we don’t plan on having children) I couldn’t see any reason beyond the pain of cleaning the diapers to buy plastic that had to be thrown out after 1 use vs. cloth that would last for a significant period of time.  I was told that most parents don’t think like that, they don’t want to deal with the messiness and inconvenience of cleaning diapers when there is a simple alternative available.  These are arguments that I really dislike – I’m as lazy as the next person but like to look at the big picture on subjects like this.  My arguments for diapers can be applied over many consumer products in use today, such as ziploc bags vs. reusable containers; paper towels vs. rags etc.

Tim had previously discussed his switch from cloth to disposable diapers here – rather than look at it from a quality of life stance, I’m going to look at the impact of using something disposable (in this case a diaper) to something re-usable (cloths).  Most of the information I got came from here, which admittedly is a pro-cloth diaper site, however I don’t think the pro-disposable diaper conglomerate has much in the way of an argument given the following:

• Over 92% of all single-use diapers end up in the landfill.
• It’s estimated that a disposable diaper would take 250-500 years to decompose.
• Disposable diapers are the third largest consumer item in landfills, and represent approximately 4% of solid waste.
• Disposable diapers contain traces of dioxin as a by-product of the paper bleaching process, along with several other nasty toxic pollutants, which besides probably not being good for a baby’s skin is definitely not good for the land and soil during the 250-500 years this product takes to decompose.

So, rather than having to deal with some baby messes most people buy something that will have to be dealt with for maybe the next FIVE CENTURIES?  Does this make sense?  I’m not really sure why there’s even a product like this out there – I would have to say that in this circumstance the environmental impact isn’t being looked at, rather most people are looking at the easier choice right now, rather than the total impact that the purchase will have in the future (hundreds of years down the road).

From what I have read cost of cloth to disposable varies, but let’s say they are approximately the same on average.  At the end of 2 years, approximately 6,000 diapers have been put into a landfill if you’ve been using disposable diapers.  While if you had chosen cloth, you’d have some tattered rags that could be used around the house, or alternatively (because it’s made of a decomposable material) will disappear (in optimal conditions in about 2 weeks).

As a culture we have created products whose main purpose is to be thrown out in order to make things more simple for us.  From a personal finance perspective longer-lasting reusable purchases tend to have a lot of up-front costs that make them undesirable to many people.  What is created by the easy choice is a lot of garbage.  I’m sure more trash has been created in the last 100 years than there ever has been in the past due to the invention of plastic.  From an environmental perspective these products are a nightmare, but most people are not looking at the big picture.

For myself, I attempt to purchase as little as possible and when I do I tend to buy longer-lasting durable products rather than disposable goods.  I will freely admit that I do own disposable products (ziploc bags, paper towels etc.) but try to limit my use of them.

I’m wondering:

1. Do you think about the purchasing decisions you make beyond the initial outlay?
2. If you have your child in disposable diapers did you ever think about cloth?  If you chose disposable diapers, how did you come to this conclusion?

I kind of flipped out a couple weeks ago in frustration because:

1. I couldn’t find something I needed in the clutter.
2. It was getting difficult to do anything in some areas of the house due to “stuff” being everywhere.

I’d really  like to get one of those massive dumpster bins and throw everything I own into it and start over.  I can only imagine that kind of feeling, of starting over with a clean slate – to attempt to do it all over again.

Besides not being a financially reasonable option, it would be environmentally irresponsible to just throw everything I own into the garbage.  As an alternative my wife and I are going to attempt to either sell (if at all possible) or Freecycle/Donate a good chunk of our stuff over the next few weeks.

I know a lot of people who feel restricted in homes that are significantly larger than ours due to that amount of material possessions they’re storing.  I don’t want to be one of “those” people who feel they need to upgrade their house because they have outgrown their small home.  I want our small home to feel huge by the end of this purging process and to never have to deal with the clutter and messes that have invaded some areas.

I was given a lot of things as wedding presents, and as a result have a lot of clutter in the kitchen.  For example, I went from having one plastic mixing bowl to 3 full matching sets (all much nicer than what I owned).  I have 5 frying pans.  My wife and I are the only two people in our house, and rarely entertain and we have 8 place settings.  Things like this lead to massive amounts of clutter and not a lot of extra space.

So, this is our current project (rather, I should say this is my wife’s current project as I am studying for a large exam that will take place on June 9th) – ridding ourselves of clutter.  If successful, we are hoping to have a much less stressful home life, as in the summer we have very little time to clean – we are rarely home on weekends, we are visiting family or friends all over the province.  This kind of schedule means that our whole life revolves around either cleaning out the car from the previous weekend or packing it up for the next weekend, and leaves little time for cleaning.  With less stuff, we’re hoping for less mess.

Ideally, I’d like to be back to a carload of possessions, but with the inclusion of things like couches, tables and a real bed – this really isn’t possible.

Have you gotten upset over the amount of material possessions you have somehow accumulated?  Did you make any money doing it?  Did the “closet-piles” regrow soon after, or have you been able to maintain the cleanliness achieved?