Another week, another Contemplation post.
If you don’t know what Contemplation is: each week I share with you a prompt from my Kikki.K A Sentence A Day journal, along with my response and I invite you to join me in responding by creating a new post and linking back to this post.
This week’s prompt: What are you saving for?
I’ve always had trouble saving. I live alone and I have mostly lived alone since leaving university. With a job involving so much travel and being in the lab with customers or in meetings all the time, it’s nice to have some quiet time when I get home, I actually enjoy the time to myself.
So what does that have to do with saving? I rent an apartment quite close to the city and previously I had a mortgage on my house in Brisbane, and these things are expensive when paying for them by yourself. However, over the last few years, I’ve been able to get into the habit of putting some money aside each month and I can now consider that my “savings”. It’s not a lot, but it’s there.
Until I read this prompt, I didn’t really think about my savings. I know it’s there and previously I had been saving for the move to Melbourne, which was such an expensive process. But now, I don’t have anything specific that I’m saving for.
I need some funds for trips home to see my family. I have an exciting trip this weekend for my best friend’s birthday back in Brisbane. I’m always on the lookout for new bits and pieces for my home – decorating, plants, and things like that.
But I guess there are two things that I’d like to keep in mind when deciding whether to spend or save – I think I’d like to go on a holiday. Every trip I’ve taken overseas in the past has been for work. I’ve taken a little time off each trip to see the sights, but I’ve never gone overseas just for me. Actually, that’s not completely true, I had a weekend in New Zealand. And I did a couple of cruises as well.
Secondly, I need to decide whether I’m going to buy a place in Melbourne. It’s not about whether I want to live here or not, it’s whether I want to buy something of my own, or just keep renting. I’m quite enjoying renting at the moment and I have the rest of the year to decide.
Until then, it’s good to have a little savings set aside, just in case….
Here are my fellow Contemplators:
Julie Powell – Photographer and Graphic Designer
Deb’s World – I really love Deb’s post.
How about you? What are you saving for?
x desleyjane
musingsofafrequentflyingscientist.com 
Houses are so damn expensive In Melbourne, if we had to do it all over again, with today’s prices we probably would have kept renting, we were lucky and bought just after the recession in the 1990s…..houses were cheaper then. Omg I sound like me grandmother!!! Lol
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LOL 😂😂
Yeah too expensive for me. I would buy an apartment if I was buying but still undecided….
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Awesome post! It’s good that you are saving, as you mentioned you never know when you’ll need it. I think for most people travel is usually the number thing to save for which is never a bad idea if you ask me 🙂
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Thank you! Yeah travel is a good bet 👍🏻
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These are important reflections to make and they can go either way.
Short or long term planning for owning things, or enjoying life..But it can go deeper than that. It can reveal how we want to lead our lives and how much we want to have from it, including material things, isn’t it? Owning a house can be to many a ritual of passage, entering in adulthood and certainty….while to others it’s meaningless. As long as they can travel and know the world, they don’t need to own a roof.
Well, your trajectory looks so balanced to me.
A bright and determined woman, taking risks and experimenting life, allowing herself to have or not, and to make conscious choices towards what it’s of value to you. Just stay the course and never buy anything in the peak of the demand side! Brava!!
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Oh thank you for that! A thoroughly thoughtful post. I’m absolutely in no hurry and am enjoying seeing where this little old life takes me. Xx
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That’s a wise decision!! Xxx
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Too late for me to think about saving! I had a long period with very little money and now I’m comfortable. I just buy: I don’t think about saving. But I’m lucky. I have enough to live in Poland for a year, maybe because I learnt frugality in the years of very little. My two daughters travelled widely without much money at all, because they had no expectations of luxury and didn’t feel the need for “things”. They did seasonal work to make enough for the next adventure, and cycled a lot. This was over four or five years
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That’s excellent. I think it’s so important to learn how to live with little. We were on a farm, so many years of not having much but we had family and that’s all we needed. You don’t realise how much your parents went through until you go through it yourself. I am so grateful to them. I’m sure your girls are grateful to you too. x
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Poverty prepared them for travel on a shoe-string certainly. Although we weren’t really poor and we ate wonderfully well from our market garden.
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Learning to travel on a budget is a wonderful thing. As long as I’m safe and have my own private plumbing (lol) I’m happy. Of course I’m not going to argue with some luxury 😊😊
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My daughters would say “Safe?” “Private plumbing?” But they were in their early twenties then. I suspect they might relish a business class upgrade now, but they’d never pay for it. They’re good at feretting out cheap fares too: under $1500 return to Warsaw in August this year, for example.
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Wow that’s awesome. I have flown business a lot, upgrading myself with points and I really don’t want to do it any other way. Alas, no points left and price becomes and issue!
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Always good to have some money set aside “just in case” Now-a-days my “just-in-case” savings are mainly back stop emergency funds as I don’t belong to any private medical fund. But I am also comfortable enough to be able to travel, but definitely in the budget category.
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I think these days, most people want to be able to travel. I think that’s wonderful.
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Saving – what I need to start doing more and yet, what I am so awful at doing! It’s amazing how some people make it look so easy… LOL I need to learn from them! Good luck with saving for a house (if you decide to stop renting) – I’m sure that if you’re determined enough, it’ll happen 😉
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Yes! How do they make it look so easy? Exactly, just stay determined and we’ll figure it out.
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Right?! Need to figure out how they do it 😛 Hehe
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