Hello Money, Goodbye Money

This past month has been the first in a long time that I've had disposable income and been able to (carefully) buy things not considered essential to my longevity. Though those luxuries include lunch because we never have much to take in that I actually want to eat. But one example is I finally, for the first time, got some flowers from Tom!

They looked a bit like this.

But I'm considering some options that may leave me back in a similar position of being broke in the future. Hmm. This economy has been a bloody hard one to be living through with there being very little for households like ours to be falling back on if things go wrong. At the end of the day, the rent needs to be paid so the landlord can pay his mortgage so the bank don't take his house off of him. It's a strange kind of position to be in; we are surrounded by objects of various wealth that such a huge amount of the world just doesn't have (eg the sofa) but we're always about a month's loss away from no food. 

Now logic would say if that were the case then why not just sell all the big expensive things so you can get by? Good point. But our home revolves somewhat around this sofa; its function aides us in so many tasks we don't even realise until it is not there. When we first got our old flat we didn't have a sofa. It was annoying and caused more backache than you'd imagine - floors are hard. So the way we have our lives, our functioning lives, requires having some things not everyone in the world has.

This is not a thing to be guilty about as it fulfils such a practical use. What I would argue is extravagance is wasting a lot of money on a sofa when you can get an equal one at less cost. Some people in our society get into this strange habit of filling rooms - having a place they live in which has more rooms than they need, so they decided to furnish them with the hope of... what? They don't want to use them, because they have other rooms which they use for the same thing. It's just to fill the space.

When we got our flat, the second bedroom was a blessing because we could put all our excess stuff there: spare lizard tanks (in case of quarantine or a new addition) a dining table (redundant by the sofa) and as storage for new things like the mountain bike.

And the next chapter was us reducing stuff down because the room changed its use, but again for a practical reason. Personally nothing screams EXCESS like having rooms you don't use but keep pristine because, hell, you can.

Anyway, one thing I'm trying to do with my money is to use it on appropriate things: we don't have the space for me to just buy cool crap. You can't get around our living room without an airer attacking you (good thing it's weighted down by the never-ending amount of washing on it). So now I may be using money more to do things - takeaways, trips, drinks, feed pets. I want it to be my tool, not master.