One of the aims for this year is to slow down! While it sounds so contradictory I am so much more productive when I am not rushing. When rushing I tend to miss things or get overwhelmed and just don’t do the 5 minute things that make a real difference to our lives and budget. When I slow down I feel more in control I logically move through things and so much more gets done.
I am really working hard to keep the feeling of urgency that I have created over years of feeling overwhelmed in check. One thing at a time.
I decided for the month of January that we would shop from home and use what we had at home first before any supermarket shops. We have allowed fresh fruit, vege, eggs and milk as a top up if we need. Luckily we tend to get a fair amount of produce gifted at this time of the year when it is in abundance. Often swapped for fish or game. I love bartering and feel it has a solid place in building a community of support around you.
This has encouraged me to allow more time to cook and I have been trying new recipes and finding that I am enjoying creating simple meals from scratch. Interestingly I am finding it a nice wind down at the end of the day and much more effective that a glass or two of wine- which does not fit in the budget this year. A story for another day.
I labelled the year, “The Year we go back in time” for the kids. We let them know there would be none of todays “conveniences”. The Uber eats, the millions of streaming sites ( we let them keep one), the stops daily at the supermarket because we didn’t get meat out, the bought lunches when we can make it. The millions of apps on our phones designed to make life easier, the packaged snacks and instant meals. The hours lost on social media.
I feel as though all of these things that are available to us to make life easier just create brain clutter. The reality is that by the time we all agree on what to order from Uber eats and it arrives, I could have cooked dinner for a quarter of the price and in less time. Takeaways in New Zealand are super expensive it could easily be over $100 for the 4 of us to have takeaways.
This is not to say we will not be having takeaways they definitely have there place. I have no issues stopping for drive through at 7pm on a Sunday night when we still have two hours of travel ahead of us.
The reality is if you have taken the time to be organised and have kept things simple it seems easier. I was of the belief that my life was so busy and I had very little extra time, however since I dramatically reduced my drinking and my time spent scrolling social media I have plenty of time to be organised. I was just wasting it before.
So lets see how the year we go back in time works out for us. Simple, quiet, slowing down.
We are ow a couple of weeks into 2026 and I decided it was time to have a look at the Year that was.
There was a lot of learning and growth made in the year.
I spent a lot of time getting our finances in order reviewing them and making changes and this means that going into the New Year we are pretty much set up. It certainly takes the pressure off feeling as though the processes that we have in place are finally working for us. As long as we stick to the budget. I love budgeting and being frugal and this is something I would like to share more with others. How this will look I am not sure.
This year the focus is on building our investment accounts with a future view on being able to make changes to our lifestyle over the next 4 to 5 years.
A bathroom renovation is on the list and will be the only major spending this year.
I spent much of my time last year reflecting on things that had happened in the past and processing how this has shaped me and the decisions that I have made. I have decided to leave this in 2025 and move forward. We make decisions with the knowledge that we have at the time. As long as it is the best decision in that moment then that is all you can do. I am refusing to stress this year. It literally changes nothing and it steals the moment. The only thing that changes a situation is action.
I did very little exercise last year and so this year I am focusing on my health and wellbeing. Exercising and getting my body moving and stronger. Our diet last year was meh. Too many takeaways and not enough fruits and vegetables. We are focusing on what we put in our bodies and how they react to that. Trying to educate the children on what they put into their bodies as well.
Last year felt like a rush. I want to slow down and keep things very simple this year. I want to spend more time writing, reading and cooking and making sure that I am enjoying the moment when doing them.
We have just had three weeks off work and I feel as though we did very little with the time off. We achieved a few things that were on our list but I really missed the family holiday that we usually take and creating memories. So thins year we will definitely be planning a holiday somewhere.
In regards to our business the plan is still to walk away in about 4 years time. So every decision that we make will be with that in mind. This year will be about thinking about what we want to do with our time after that and looking at what we need to do to make those things happen.
Goodbye 2025 you were a busy but good year. Here’s to 2026 and all the things to come.
When I started this journey I thought that progress would be linear. It is not!
I haven’t posted about a book in a while. I was struggling my way through ‘The Millionaire next door’ and after a month of that I decided to leave it for now. The book itself is good and full of useful information but I feel as though the information is from about twenty years ago. I haven’t looked at the publishing date though so it very well could be.
I also feel as though I have got the budget into a pretty good place where we are doing a reasonable amount of saving for both retirement and the future, especially considering we are at the most expensive time in our lives. Children in private school and doing expensive sports, at least I hope this is as expensive as it gets.
So I decided to lean into a different area and am now reading, ‘Fast like a girl’.
So back to the layers of the onion and progress being all zig zagged and definitely not linear. I am beginning to see that there are pillars to my journey, layers as such that kind of all intertwine together to make up me and the new version of myself that I am looking for.
There is a financial pillar that is helping us towards future financial freedom. A physical pillar that is helping me find a better and healthier version of myself and mental or spiritual pillar. There may be more that I find as the journey progresses.
Last week was crazy I travelled half the country for sporting events and worked almost full time. I stayed in a house with 12 other people. This is something that 6 months ago would have sent me spiralling into a place I really didn’t want to be. Don’t get me wrong I did have my moments where I really doubted whether I could do what I said I would do. However, I actually had fun. I handled it well and I enjoyed the company of 10 teenage girls. I got to know some of my daughters friends better and I got to see them work as a team to achieve great things.
This week is much calmer and everyone is where they need to be and so I decided to focus on my physical health. I have mentioned before that I am about 15kg overweight and want to do something about it. I have dabbled in fasting before and enjoyed it so we will see where this journey takes me.
I guess one of the things that is really impacting me is the fact that I am focusing on this being a journey… there is no destination, achieve or fail, I don’t even know if there is an end goal or what that will look like. I am just going with it.
At times it feels a bit all over the place but mostly it feel empowering. As long as I am making progress towards bettering myself and my life i’m okay with it. Some things work and some don’t. I am discovering layers to my thoughts and feelings that I probably plastered over years ago hoping to never delve into again but that is okay too. I feel because I have no finite goal on the journey there is no ability to fail just to make progress…whatever that looks like.
I have no idea who the person who said this is or was. Feel free to educate me. But wow lately I have realised there is nothing truer than this statement.
I have found myself embracing what I can learn from my past. There have been many years where I felt bitter, disappointed, upset by things that had happened. Wondering why they happened. Annoyed at myself for decisions that I had made.
I would wake up at an hour where people should only be asleep and go over these things in my head. Over and over, the thoughts would overwhelm me until I finally feel asleep again…most probably a few minutes before the alarm went off.
Through this journey I have found myself letting go of the past. I still have a long way to go but I have been looking at it through a different lens. It is so easy to get wrapped up in our own version of what happened, another persons role. But we rarely stop to consider a different version of the past. I look at my childhood and lately have attempted to view it from the perspective of my parents, or my sister.
I had a conversation recently with my younger sister about the day she found out she was pregnant with her first, she was 23 if I remember correctly.
I remember the day clearly. She told me she thought she was pregnant and asked me what I thought she should do. I said buy a test and find out so off we went to the local shopping mall. She took the test in the toilets, found out she was pregnant and we then went at sat in our local coffee shop for an hour figuring out how to tell Mum without her hitting the roof.
I thought that I had done a good job of being excited for her, as we had been trying for a couple of years and had had two miscarriages. I was excited for her and for our family. Long story short, she told Mum and yes she hit the roof. To her credit she came down within a few hours and proved herself to be a wonderful grandmother with patience we certainly didn’t see when we were young.
My sisters perspective on the day is very different. She was terrified of not being pregnant but of my reaction, as I was the one married and trying for children. She thought I would be upset and disappointed, she was correct I obviously had those emotions but it was not with her just the situation. Our lens were different as they should have been.
There is so much to be understood and learned from the past but it certainly isn’t worth dwelling on or regretting. Take the learning that you can and move forward with life.
I have never been a cleaner. Don’t get me wrong our house is tidy and cleanish but definitely not sparkling.
Well lately it is!
It seems the simpler I make life and the more I delve into my future freedom journey the cleaner my house gets. It probably helps that I am drinking less or nothing at all and so I have replaced some of the hours spent drinking with cleaning but this has never been the case in the past.
It’s a weird energy that seems to have come about and I now cannot tolerate the mess or dirt and I feel a satisfaction out of making it look nice. The odd thing is I see dirt in places that I didn’t see it before, however I am sure it was there.
I have always led a minimalistic life. Lots of things and mess have always increased my anxiety and I learned at a fairly young age that the less things you owned the less mess that could be made. Although I do feel my daughter defies this logic. She could make nothing messy I swear. Anyway I have always loved throwing things away in fact in the past I have been known to throw something out rather than clean it. Don’t judge me!
I am now questioning whether there is a relationship between the clarity that I am finding as I progress through this journey and my want to keep things nice. I am aware of the financial benefits of looking after things as they are obviously going to last longer.
That being said, I am now separating my whites from my darks and soaking items so that they come up cleaner. I cannot put this change down to education as I already knew that I should do these things I just was either too lazy or figured I didn’t have time.
I think the deeper change is that I have learned that I want our home to be a place where we want to be. A place where we feel content and our brains can rest and re-cooperate. A place that we want to go home to everyday. A place my children want to return to. A place free of the hair from three big Rotties, haha.
I know I always wanted this but I didn’t think that cleaning and organising had that much of an impact on it. I have learned that the reality is if home is a disorganised mess then so is the atmosphere in that home. We need calm and organised and things to be nice so that we all feel that way too.
I have an inkling about what is happening but I want to delve a bit further into this journey and develop a bit more confidence before going further into it.
When I began this journey at the beginning of the year I didn’t know what it would bring. I just knew that I wanted to explore what freedom looked like for us in the future. I felt we were stuck and that the coming years looked all very same same. They still look all very same same.
The only think I knew was that I wanted to educate myself, read books, question my ideals and challenge what I thought my normal life would look like. Haha What a fantasy normal life is. It does not exist.
What I didn’t realise is how deeply it would make me delve into pockets of the past that I hadn’t really thought mattered in my life. I have found myself questioning past decisions, not in a regretful way but wondering what I was thinking at the time. On reflection many times I was just surviving and that is where the decision came from. But that is a discussion for another day.
I have found myself questioning relationships and friendships, whether I have played my role to the best of my ability. Looking at friendships that are no longer and thinking about the why.
The fact is you go through so many phases in life and at various times your friendship groups evolve. We have friends that have been supportive throughout the years and then there are friends were realised after a while were not really friends to begin with. They bought a type of toxicity to our lives that we didn’t feel we needed and therefore we moved on or it petered out. Who knows maybe we did the same for them.
What I have realised lately is that the people you surround yourself with on the daily matter deeply. The positive support of friends and family is needed and affects your mental health on many levels. I read an article the other day that said many mental health issues all come down to who a person surrounds themself with.
I see this in my children. My son has very strong friendships with a circle of boys that support each other and build each other up. Yes they talk absolute shit about how high there moto jumps were as teenage boys do but the nitty gritty is at the end of racing they raise the others up. A fist pump here, a congrats on a win and an apology when they make a mistake that affects someone else race too. My son can’t play rugby due to a heart defect but you will often find him on a Saturday morning at the rugby field supporting these same boys. They are confident in their communication ability, and even when they are twats to each other it seems to be put down to a bad day.
My daughter on the other hand has a group of girls that can be toxic. Possibly just teenage girls in general but I don’t remember being as mean as they all seem to be. They seem to be friends one day and not the next and they fall out over the most minor of things. I see her question her place in her friend group daily. My suggestion to her to question whether they are actually friends in the first place didn’t go down well and I am sure she plays her role in the dynamics of the group. But it certainly affects how she feels about herself.
We have what I feel are a fairly solid and supportive group of friends at the moment, interestingly made up of many of my sons friends parents. We spend a lot of time with these people and generally feel as though they lift us up. Hopefully this continues for many years to come.
I have looked back many times this year over my relationship with my parents and siblings. The way I feel about them seems to stem mostly from events that happened in my late teens and 20’s. Once I became a parent it seemed less important to dwell on small things and I just wanted my children to have as many supportive people in their lives as they could.
My relationship with my mother has always been tumultuous. There were times where we got a long well but mostly we didn’t like each other very much. This stemmed from my teenage years where I was often yelled at, didn’t feel heard and I felt constantly belittled and un important. Disagreements often were nasty and the core issues never faced. I have recently come to realise that my teenage years coincided with my Mum losing her Mum and her and my Dad divorcing. Neither of these things could have been easy for her and perhaps her reactions were just a sign of her mental health at the time.
Not an excuse but when I deal with my own teens I can see how easy it would be for the frustrations of life to boil over. This realisation of late has had a huge impact on how I deal with my teens and my relationship with them has improved. The realisation that we are their sounding board and safe place and that my stress in life should not impact our relationship or my reactions.
My relationship with my father was an interesting one. He was an alcoholic and rather dysfunctional in life. He was very kind and worked hard but when all was said and done he had nothing. I moved in with him when I was 17 and I remember going to a party one night and missing the last train home. No biggy, I just crashed at a friends place and caught the midday train home the following day. I wandered up the drive at about 2pm and he said, “oh I thought you were in bed asleep”. Even as a 17 year old this shocked me, he hadn’t even checked to see if I had arrived home. I can’t settle at night until I know my children are safe either in their own bed or at a friends. Even though he was like this I still idolised him. I thought he was the most amazing man on earth. It wasn’t until my late teens that I realised he wasn’t everything I had him dreamed up to be in my mind. Looking back I am glad that through my childhood I was oblivious to his shortcomings.
I look at my daughters relationship with my husband. They are very close and she loves him to bits. He is her rock her sounding board and over the years I have found myself occasionally jealous of the relationship they have. Personality wise they are very similar though and so this makes sense,He has his rare moments but generally speaking he is the man that she has probably built him up to be in her mind.
My reflections have led me to realise that it is so important to be supportive and encouraging of those around us. To give everything we can to a relationship. I often feel as though I don’t give enough of my time, whether it is to listen or to do something kind. So that is my relationship journey moving forward. Not everyone will reciprocate but I can’t control another persons role in our friendship or relationship the only one I can own is mine.
I made it a week before I fell off the wagon so to speak. Where did that saying come from? I must look it up. I discovered that the weekends are incredibly hard when you are doing it by yourself. Nothing worse than watching hubby enjoy a cold beer on a Friday and wanting to join in. So I did. Did I regret it? Yes a bit.
Moving on though he told me that he would like to cut back and get healthier too so that means we now get to do this together. Which is going to make life so much easier as we can help keep each other accountable.
I also discovered that I need to change my habits and routines as pouring a glass of wine has become such an ingrained part of my day. In fact it became the very first thing I did when I walked in the door without me even realising.
I have spent time lately trying to pin point at what stage in my life this change took place. When did I go from rarely drinking to it becoming a daily thing? I didn’t really drink before we had children. If we went out then I might have one but I was usually the sober driver. I remember going back to work full time when our youngest was about 8 months old. We had a beer fridge in the shed and I would unload the car and take a couple of beers inside with me. I would drink them over the next few hours as we did baths, dinner, etc. Perhaps that is where the habit began.
I was never a big wine drinker. However my MIL and SIL were and so when we got together…weekly then that would be what I drank. I remember starting a fitness programme in 2017 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and so I wouldn’t drink the night before going. But then that evening I would ‘reward’ myself for my workout with a bottle of wine. Looking back I was undoing all my hard work but I was oblivious to that at the time.
Life got busy when we purchased our business at the beginning of 2018 and while I managed to stick out the programme till the end of the year I then gave it away. With it the excuse not to drink three nights a week. This coincided with some terrible staff issues, lawyers visits and of course covid and so the nightly debrief that we would have became a thing.
In 2021 I gave up for three months and then for no reason that I can recall started again. I probably just assumed I could moderate… haha.
In 2022 I vowed I would start the year and have a year free of alcohol. I remember my Mum laughing at me and saying she didn’t think I could do it. I made it to mid April and I think it was a trip away at Easter Weekend that was the excuse I needed to start again.
2023 We decided we wouldn’t drink during the week and we actually made that work pretty well if you don’t count the binge drinking on the weekends. Somehow a Friday night slowly became a Thursday night and then a Wednesday… so on.
So here we are in 2025 vowing to not lose our Spring and Summer evenings to alcohol yet again. In my head and on paper it all seams so easy. Just don’t buy it! But usually come later in the week one of us will say, “I fancy a drink.” That is all it takes and the week is written off ready for us to start again the following.
So this week it is a NO go zone. The word drink, wine, beer or alcohol are not to be uttered. We are heading away for the weekend and have decided that we will go out for a meal and enjoy a drink with dinner while we are away but we clearly cannot have it in the house. It may take a lot of work but I believe eventually we will find a balance that will work for us. For now though I need a new routine when I first walk in the door. Something simple but one I will enjoy.
What was I thinking when I decided to stop drinking on a Friday…The one day of the week that I have almost always had a drink. I definitely can’t say that it was an easy weekend.
I have had weird cravings for things that I have never wanted before. I bought myself a can of ‘V’. I haven’t had an energy drink in probably 20 years but felt I really wanted it. The first mouthful was nice but then I struggled my way through the rest of the can. I won’t be buying that again.
It got me thinking about my alcohol drinking. The first glass is always lovely but after that I just keep drinking it because it is open and I have no self control.
My sleep has been terrible, although a sick dog really added to that. So I can’t really assume that that is the fault of not drinking, They say you sleep better when you don’t drink so I am hoping that my sleep will improve over the week.
I need to find some things to occupy myself in the evenings. I have about three books I have started and not finished so I will begin there. But I will happily take on suggestions- No crafts please.
I have been toying with this idea for at least the last ten years. I have known since our children were young that my relationship with alcohol would be described as dysfunctional.
I don’t drink everyday and there have been periods of time over the years where I’m have not drunk for months or weeks but I’m always go back to it and once I pop out can’t stop.
I grew up with an alcoholic father. It didn’t really affect my life hugely as he was not nasty or violent. He was just a drunk that had nothing. The kindest drunk I knew. When I was 21 he went into liver failure and ended up giving up alcohol. He received a new liver and managed 10 more years of life before dying of cancer. I’ve seen first hand the toll alcohol can take on the mind and the body.
But back to me. My reasons. There are so many.
My daughter hates me drinking and as she gets older it is starting to have an impact on our relationship.
It is definitely affecting my health. In the past five years I have put on 15kg mostly in the form of calories from wine.
It steals my motivation. Five years ago I was running half marathons and playing with the idea of running a full. Now I’d be lucky if I could run to the end of the road.
It steals my time. I do things while drinking but not well. The time I spend drinking in the evenings could definitely be used doing other things. Running maybe.
I’m literally flushing money down the toilet. It is so expensive. I hate to think how much money I have wasted over the years. Thousands!
So it’s time for change. I know it won’t be easy but I set out this year to find freedom and this is definitely going to be freeing. I’m excited to see what it will look like
We own a collision repair business…so you crash your car we fix it. I kind of landed in it when the business started to grow. I left my job as a teacher and came to work with my husband and I am now the admin person. It’s been this way for 10 years now.
Surprisingly we get along really well 99% of the time and the 1% is usually caused by outside influences. Working together is fine although I would love at the end of the day to ask, “How was your day?” and not already know the answer. It would be great to add to the list of things we get to discuss.
The problem lies in the fact that neither of us really like the job. I am not a lover of cars and never have been. There is also the fact that the customer that comes to you has crashed their car or someone else has and therefore they are in a slightly heightened state of emotion over it already. Insurance companies take their time. Parts take forever to get to NZ if they are overseas and I am generally the bearer of shit news for the customer. Which I cop it for. I get that! But the reality is…I didn’t crash the car. I am the one trying to help get it fixed.
There are very few decent staff available in our industry and therefore this limits the amount of work you can get through and creates a world of problems in itself. When you have shit staff you have a hard time getting rid of them and when you have great staff you feel constantly pressured to keep them happy.
So where does this leave me. Sadly I have bills to pay and I feel kind of stuck so I guess the only way forward is an exit plan? It needs to be fairly solid as it’s not like one of us is walking away from a job we both are…. What would you do?
