Tag Archives: travel

Rental Cars and the Downsized Life

By Claire Posted in Debt-Free, downsizing, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , ,

Since we downsized our lives over ten years ago, we look at our belongings in a different way than we once did. Now, keeping things simple and keeping expenses down have become the determining factors in what we own and what we do.

Case in point: by moving to a small city, we don’t have to drive far for anything, yet we have most everything we need here so we can go a month or more without leaving town. Add in the fact that we both work from home, and the result is that we put very few miles on our cars. So we haven’t had to replace them; they are now getting a little long in the tooth, being 12 and 16 years old, with 85,000 and 130,000 miles on them, respectively.

Recently, the air conditioning began to go on the “newer” car, and the repairman says it’ll cost about $800 to fix it. Since the a/c still works well on the older car, I’ve been driving it around town lately. But when we’ve taken some longer trips this summer, we decided we’d rather drive something newer and cooler (literally) than our “newer” car. So we rented vehicles instead. (The car rental office is a mile from our home, so it’s quite easy for us to pick up and drop off rental vehicles.)

It will take several rentals to equal $800. A 2019 minivan with 6,000 miles on it cost us $210 for a week-long rental in June. A 2019 SUV with 17,000 miles on it cost us $130 for a three-day weekend in August. So we can enjoy a longer trip with a newer vehicle for a reasonable price and without adding miles to our own vehicles.

If we drove new cars all year long, our car insurance bill would be quite a bit larger than the $500+ we now pay for one year of driving two old cars. But it doesn’t matter how much you pay for car insurance as long as you have it when you go to rent a new car. So we enjoy a low car insurance rate all year, and new cars when we travel.

I should point out that those affordable car rental rates are due to our Costco membership. We get quite a discount on car rental rates by going through them. See https://www.costcotravel.com/Rental-Cars for more details.

Using a Windfall Wisely

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,

What can you do with a windfall of cash that won’t fill your house back up with clutter? (Or more clutter, if you haven’t gone through all of your belongings in years.)

First off is the prudent choice: invest it, in the stock market, or in a CD (I just got one with a 3% interest rate). Someday you may need that cash and you’ll be glad you set it aside.

If you really want to have fun with the money now, however, you won’t want to put it away for a rainy day. But if you spend it on big-ticket items, you’ll just add to the clutter in your house. What to do? Why not spend it on experiences?

You can use it to travel, to go to concerts and shows, or to go on vacation. Make memories with it; take people you love with you (your treat) and make even more memories with it.

Perhaps you aren’t able to travel or go too many places right now. Why not share some of your windfall with a favorite child in your life, to pay for music lessons or summer camp? What about sending a larger-than-usual donation to your favorite charity?

If none of those ideas thrills you, and you really want a new fridge, or a new sofa, or some other “thing,” go for it. There’s nothing wrong with that. BUT, don’t keep the old one. I know it’s tempting to keep that old fridge in the garage in case you have a party and need extra fridge space for pop and beer. It’s only a little challenging to lug that old sofa down to the basement in case you need extra seating down there (and if you do, you’re never going to bring it back up—things get heavier when you lug them upstairs). But once you start keeping things you don’t really need, you’re back on the road to an overstuffed house.

Instead, give your still-usable “old” item to a local charity; Habitat for Humanity’s Re-stores are great places to donate appliances that are still useful, and some also take furniture. You can also put your item out in front of your house with a very reasonable price taped to it. Post it on Craig’s List on a day when you’re going to be home. Whatever you do with it, don’t let that “old” item stay in the house, or you will begin a bad habit: allowing clutter to re-establish itself in your home.