Identifying Waste

[Stravinsk]

Things that cost you money - that are essentially a waste. They're a waste not because you don't use them, but because they aren't worth it.

Do you ever go through this exercise to see where your lifestyle is encroaching on your budget?

I have determined my fridge is a waste. Not the freezer portion of it, just the fridge. Why:

It's large and filled with half drained sauces and other things that have gone bad and I need to throw away. The majority of the space is simply not used. The few things I keep in it can be frozen and de-thawed at need. I use my freezer daily, but the fridge is not worth the daily running of it. At least not for my lifestyle, it isn't.

More so because electricity prices in Australia are amongst the highest in the world. Lot of countries have higher costs, but a lot more are cheaper, at least according to this:

Electricity prices around the world | GlobalPetrolPrices.com

What's more, my local gov has recently banned new houses from 2024 from installing natural gas (part of the so called "green" solution). At the same time we are presently given a subsidy for electricity that will end next year....because prices are going to go even higher. Monopolize energy and squeeze. Don't believe the green rhetoric.

So I've decided the fridge has to go. I absolutely need a freezer, a small one, but not a fridge.

 

[tango]

I've done that many times, usually when I'm expecting my income to reduce in the foreseeable future. Before a couple of major life overhauls I went through everything.

What I found useful was to trim things out of the budget and see if we noticed they were gone. If we didn't notice, or didn't really miss them, they could stay gone. Cable TV fell squarely into that category - we found we missed one or two channels but it wasn't worth the price to get one or two channels. Now we have Netflix and are considering dumping that because most of what's on it is either stuff we've seen a dozen times or just dross.

I try and avoid using Amazon because I prefer to support local business, so Amazon Prime was an easy thing to cut from the budget.

Excessive heat and air conditioning cost extra money without offering incremental benefit. So we turned the heating down a degree. Just one degree. If we felt chilly we turned it back up. If we didn't notice we gave it a few days and then turned it down another degree. Rinse and repeat. It's surprising how much energy you can save by doing that without really noticing much difference. Likewise in the summer easing up a little on the air conditioning means we can stay comfortable without spending extra on keeping it cooler than we need it.

 

[prism]

I'm sure Amazon has that perfect miniature freezer, as they seem to have everything else.

Amazon.com