Step.2 WASTING MONEY

Step.2  WASTING MONEY

Before we did what our friends and family interpreted as hot air coming from college students with very little money, even less income, and no motivation to job hunt in the worst global recession ever, we took our own advice (Step.1), by putting our monthly payment obligations on auto-pilot (while making sure to include them in our expense spreadsheet); selling our unwanted stuff, which didn’t help much due to the emerging buyers market, and decided what had to be cut from our life style so we could live on a reasonable budget. You’ll probably be on a budget with or without a job, being that most of the world’s wages are something that we spoiled Americans like to laugh and complain about. Before threatening to write an angry letter to your destination country's Dept of Labor, first realize that whatever you make working in adventure land is probably twice as much than what Jose Ricardo pulls in, who will be more than happy to take your job while keeping his.

Anyway, waste of money things that should be cut include: delicious expensive dark beer, cigarettes (unless you role your own), frozen food, and of course going out to eat or hitting the bars a lot. We’ve wasted a fortune dining in expensive restaurants, handing out undeserved tips, and slugging back just one more $7 pint of imported ale. We think about this relatively recent past of ours with a sense of fond remembrance, which 
is quickly squashed by the undeniable probability that we must have 
at some point been served tainted food, with any number of 
disgusting possibilities...

So, aside from wasting your cash on overpriced food and drink, even more money is wasted by our consumer driven mentality, and overwhelming urge to have whatever new cool thing is on TV. Our American minds have been programmed to buy 
the newest and best of everything, so we can only be happy by spending money instead of saving it. By constantly buying new items you already have like clothing, shoes, TVs, and other hip and trendy items that cost 100 times less to make in China or whatever other voodoo country is enslaving its people for Nike; you make every middleman merchant between Bangkok and Omaha rich while you struggle with your bills. Maybe it’s because money is so dirty and germy, we don’t feel comfortable keeping it in our pants pocket.

You probably get the point of all this by now, but we'll still touch base on a few more things that cost way too much, and deliver way too little, making them unnecessary wastes of money. Have a cell phone? Of course you do, who doesn’t? It’s useful for business purposes and keeping in touch with friends and family, but unless you’re the executive of a fortune 500 company or an on-call doctor, you can probably get by with a standard land line, and hell, maybe even an old fashioned answering machine. Otherwise, $50 a month for a tracking device is a retarded waste of money. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a cell phone since high school, when they first became huge, and even had one during the first couple of years of traveling around and doing what we're now writing about. If you have a computer or laptop, you can easily e-mail or video chat through Skype. Services like Skype are free as long as you can find an internet connection, which you no doubt can. We'll admit that we were surprised about the locations of some very solid wireless connections in what most would think of as the 3rd world. These connections are unsecured of course, but free, so unless you try to file your taxes through them, you should be fine. If you don’t have a computer; there are always internet cafes in city areas that are either free or inexpensive. But of course, if a cell phone is one of the things you can’t live without, keep it, spend the $50 a month, and make cuts elsewhere in your budget.

We like to make enough monthly cutbacks so that we can splurge every once in a while, without missing a rent payment or 
going hungry.

Money's Easy To Save When   =====>
It's Framed And Behind Glass...

-Go To Step.3 Rent Or Buy?