It’s happened to all of us. You get dressed, do your hair, apply your make-up, and feel pretty good about the effort you’ve made.
Then at some point in your day, you catch a glance of yourself in the mirror, and you’re slightly horrified to find that you’re a bit of a hot mess.
I’ve been in the financial industry almost my entire business life, so I suppose I take my financial knowledge for granted. When I worked in private banking, some of my clients were older ladies, widows mostly, who were in the terribly uncomfortable position of finding that they knew almost nothing about the finances that their husbands had handled. Luckily their partners had set them up with professional money management accounts, so they had advisors looking after their investments. But when it came to paying bills and making purchasing decisions, they had no idea where to begin.
Deeply inspired (as always) by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, and in particular by his personal experiment of A Year of Living Without, I have decided to embark on the same experiment.
I am doing this for the same reasons Leo writes, below:
“It’s my way of finding out what’s truly necessary, of simplifying my life, of making room for other things.
I’m testing the boundaries of my needs. It’s good to test your personal boundaries now and then (or, if you’re me, all the time).
So what’s the Year of Living Without?
Contributing factors include, but are certainly not limited to, the following: