The Ultimate Cheapskate
When I reviewed The
Four Hour Workweek
recently, altrdego
from Livejournal suggested that I check out The
Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches. Like the real
cheapskate I am, I promptly requested the book through interlibrary
loan, took it home, and was thrilled to learn that on a consumerist
scale of 1-25, I score a 2. (I lost points for tearing up during
a Hallmark commercial a few years ago, and for remembering a billboard
--- bad me!)
The Ultimate Cheapskate
is far more closely aligned with my ethics --- unsurprising since the
author comes from the nonprofit sector and obviously shares my
uneasiness with our capitalist society. While the
underlying theme in The Four
Hour Workweek was how to use the system and get ahead, the theme
of The Ultimate
Cheapskate
is how to live better on less. That's my kind of book.
I'm a pretty major cheapskate already, so most of the book was a quick
and easy read with entertainment value but not too much new
information. The transportation chapter, though, caught my
eye. The author makes the argument that a bicycle literally gets
you to your location faster than a car in most cases if you factor in
the time you work to pay for the car, gas, insurance, etc.
With this revelation in mind,
I sat down with Gnucash (freeware finances program) and figured that we
spend 19% of our yearly expenses on
our cars! Would I rather be sitting at
my computer for hours writing a grant proposal so that I can drive into
town in fifteen minutes, or would it better to make a fun day of it and
bicycle into town and not have to sit in front of the computer at
all? Sure, as rural residents with no access to public
transportation, we do need a car...but do we really need two?
Unfortunately, I don't think Mark and I are quite ready to discard either vehicle yet. Still, I
think I'll pump up the tires on our bikes and see if I can include more
biking in our daily life, try out the week-long fiscal fast recommended
in the book, and continue in my quest to become more of a cheapskate
every day.
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