Once a year I clear out files that are out of statuette. Our office went paperless several years ago, but the hangover from pre-paperless days fills several rooms of filing cabinets. Slowly the old documents get shredded and recycled and the paper mound declines.
Going paperless does not mean we use no paper. We keep many documents in electronic format with certain working papers and signature pages kept in hardcopy. Some would say we are not fully paperless as a result. Still, if we scanned these documents into the computer and shredded the originals immediately we would still have used the original piece of paper.
Our paper usage has declined 48% from 10 years ago. We still provide a paper copy of tax returns to clients. Few ask for a pdf copy of their return and the few that do also want a paper copy and we are happy to oblige.
The shredding of old documents is spread out over several weeks. The process for this year is nearly finished. As I feed the hungry maw of the shredder I am taken aback by the amount of white I see. So many pages have only a small amount used and only one side of the page. What a waste. The frugal accountant hates waste. Actually, it makes my blood boil.
If both sides of the paper were used I could cut paper usage by about half from current reduced levels. Paper drains the coffers by thousands each year and pushes up prices to handle this additional cost. In the past I checked into getting a printer that automatically uses both sides of the page. The cost was prohibitive and would not save much as the tax software does not support this conservative approach to paper use. At least in the past.
With new vigor I am revisiting this possibility of reducing paper usage and hence, cost. The tax software supports printing on both sides of the page now and printers that duplex print have come down in cost. I bet the cost of a duplex printer is paid for in a year. Tax returns will look smaller, but I have never been about impressing clients with thick tax returns; I am about preparing an accurate return.
Most tax offices still leave the back side of the page blank, wasting half the paper. This is a phenomenon of the wasteful United States. Americans have a habit of wasting too much. This lowers our lifestyle without any benefit. Plus we have the effort and cost of disposal. I am turning back this wasteful habit and using the whole page from now on. The investment is small and will save money.
The printer will cost several hundred dollars I estimate. With paper running over $30 a case the savings add up quick. No matter how frugal I am I always seem to find ways to reduce waste/costs more.
The effort to simplify life, reduce costs and wastes, minimize environmental impact is ongoing. The effort is small. It only requires and open mind and ready eye to spot opportunities. Besides, the landfill is full enough.
Showing posts with label frugal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frugal. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Frugal Weight Loss
America is the most overweight society in the history of the human race. Even the military has a hard time finding enough personnel in good physical condition. Americans also spend more on diets than anyone: diet programs and diet foods. Sugar and fat are removed from every item on the grocery store shelves and we are still fat.
Overpriced TV dinners hawked endlessly by washed up football players and other celebrities from the past are not the answer. For most people the answer is not in what we eat, but in how we live. The diet advice is endless.
This blog post is not a substitute for medical advice. Your doctor can help develop a safe and effective diet program. Your personal health must be considered when building a weight loss program and your doctor is the starting point.
First, get a skinny doctor. If your doctor does not believe in good health it is unlikely he can provide an effective and lasting weight loss program. Second, I think most people will be told by their doctor to exercise more. This is the hard part. Eating certain foods in certain quantities is hard, but exercise? Are you serious? You mean, like walking, running, and that kind of stuff? Do not cuss out your doctor just because he says you need to move a little. I will show you how to get free exercise without any effort and there is no fee. Heard that one before, haven't you?
The real problem for most folks is daily physical activity. As a frugal accountant (friendly, too) I don't like the idea of coughing up a thousand dollar hairball every year for a gym membership. Without any cost you can get your walking and weight training in without a gym. The swimming and steam room might require a membership, but that is a different matter.
A brisk walk is about the most perfect exercise there is. Here is an easy way to get your brisk walk in: park as far away as possible when shopping. No more jockeying for the closest parking stall, you now park waaaay over there at the other end of the parking lot.
Now for some weight conditioning. Carry your purchases. No cart. If you buy too much stuff, take several trips. The more you buy the more exercise you get. With the extra grand in cash savings from the gym membership you can shop more. (The frugal accountant recommends you save the money.)
Look how easy it is to save money and lose weight. Life is more enjoyable when you can get around. Studies show that a proper diet and exercise lowers risk of several diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Shedding excess pounds also reduces stress on your bones and joints.
Look for creative ways to walk and carry more. It all adds up. Calories burn off when you walk and muscles tone when worked.
Here is to the good life.
Overpriced TV dinners hawked endlessly by washed up football players and other celebrities from the past are not the answer. For most people the answer is not in what we eat, but in how we live. The diet advice is endless.
This blog post is not a substitute for medical advice. Your doctor can help develop a safe and effective diet program. Your personal health must be considered when building a weight loss program and your doctor is the starting point.
First, get a skinny doctor. If your doctor does not believe in good health it is unlikely he can provide an effective and lasting weight loss program. Second, I think most people will be told by their doctor to exercise more. This is the hard part. Eating certain foods in certain quantities is hard, but exercise? Are you serious? You mean, like walking, running, and that kind of stuff? Do not cuss out your doctor just because he says you need to move a little. I will show you how to get free exercise without any effort and there is no fee. Heard that one before, haven't you?
The real problem for most folks is daily physical activity. As a frugal accountant (friendly, too) I don't like the idea of coughing up a thousand dollar hairball every year for a gym membership. Without any cost you can get your walking and weight training in without a gym. The swimming and steam room might require a membership, but that is a different matter.
A brisk walk is about the most perfect exercise there is. Here is an easy way to get your brisk walk in: park as far away as possible when shopping. No more jockeying for the closest parking stall, you now park waaaay over there at the other end of the parking lot.
Now for some weight conditioning. Carry your purchases. No cart. If you buy too much stuff, take several trips. The more you buy the more exercise you get. With the extra grand in cash savings from the gym membership you can shop more. (The frugal accountant recommends you save the money.)
Look how easy it is to save money and lose weight. Life is more enjoyable when you can get around. Studies show that a proper diet and exercise lowers risk of several diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Shedding excess pounds also reduces stress on your bones and joints.
Look for creative ways to walk and carry more. It all adds up. Calories burn off when you walk and muscles tone when worked.
Here is to the good life.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
How to Declutter Your Life For Fun, Sanity, and Profit
For the last six months clutter has been my enemy number one. The accumulation of crap junk things in my life sapped my sanity and productivity. The effort is slow, but progressing. Each step taken improves my peace of mind and reduces stress.
No one will accuse me of a clutter-free life. The goal is to reduce a little bit of clutter each day. Yesterday I took a huge step. At the office there is a side storage room that leads to the basement. The closet/hall is lined with shelves of old tax journals, tax code, and other junk accumulated over 27 years of business. The storage space is less cluttered today.
There were some real beauties in there: two complete volumes of the tax code with regulation and explanation from 1988 and 1992, a Wisconsin unemployment handbook from 1994, binders, Who's Who for 1996, practice builder sales literature from who knows when, and an old Section 105 administration guide.
The shelves under all that weight were stressed to the max and an accident waiting to happen. The shelves no longer groan. All paper is in the shredding room and the binders were either recycled or burned. Office paper is cross-cut shred and ends up a fibrous mass good for bedding my animals at home. The office feels better for the effort. The shredding room should return to normal in a few days.
My desk and office floor were recently covered from end to end with stacks of papers and works in progress. My office is still cluttered and requires more drastic action, but in the last several months I have been complimented with comments like, "Keith, I can see your floor," and ""You have a desk!"
Yes, most of my floor is clear. Most. You can actually see bits and pieces of my desktop most days. Vigilance is required daily. The clutter bomb is always waiting to reassert itself.
If you desire your life back (as I did), peace of mind, less stress, and a better quality of life, declutter. Here are a few tips I used to declutter:
Now you can breathe.
No one will accuse me of a clutter-free life. The goal is to reduce a little bit of clutter each day. Yesterday I took a huge step. At the office there is a side storage room that leads to the basement. The closet/hall is lined with shelves of old tax journals, tax code, and other junk accumulated over 27 years of business. The storage space is less cluttered today.
There were some real beauties in there: two complete volumes of the tax code with regulation and explanation from 1988 and 1992, a Wisconsin unemployment handbook from 1994, binders, Who's Who for 1996, practice builder sales literature from who knows when, and an old Section 105 administration guide.
The shelves under all that weight were stressed to the max and an accident waiting to happen. The shelves no longer groan. All paper is in the shredding room and the binders were either recycled or burned. Office paper is cross-cut shred and ends up a fibrous mass good for bedding my animals at home. The office feels better for the effort. The shredding room should return to normal in a few days.
My desk and office floor were recently covered from end to end with stacks of papers and works in progress. My office is still cluttered and requires more drastic action, but in the last several months I have been complimented with comments like, "Keith, I can see your floor," and ""You have a desk!"
Yes, most of my floor is clear. Most. You can actually see bits and pieces of my desktop most days. Vigilance is required daily. The clutter bomb is always waiting to reassert itself.
If you desire your life back (as I did), peace of mind, less stress, and a better quality of life, declutter. Here are a few tips I used to declutter:
- Think Small Clutter takes a lifetime to build, it will take less time to dispose of, but it will take time. Dealing with a lifetime of clutter is overwhelming. Start with one room or closet and get the low hanging fruit first. Worn out clothes should be sent to recycling or the thrift shop, depending on condition. Old magazines and junk mail are easy choices for most of us.
- One Thing a Day Schedules are tight. If you don't have hours, or even an hour or fifteen minutes, commit to one thing a day. Get rid of one thing, one piece of clutter, and don't replace it.
- Focus on the Important My desk and floor required immediate attention. Perfection never entered the equation. My focus was to get papers off the floor and clean my desk so the desktop could be seen. Sometimes decluttering life means ending procrastination. A lot of little jobs can reduce productivity when working the big jobs. I like to take one-half day a week and dig into all the little projects that accumulated and clean them up.
- Electronic Clutter In my line of work electronic clutter is an issue. I turn my email off for most of the day. I deal with email, correspondence, and phone calls at selected times. This allows for greater productivity. Since I get more work done this way, it frees up time for things I prefer to do. Take steps to reduce email. Make good use of the junk mail folder. Turn off the interruptions of cell phones and other devices that sap your lifeblood.
- Tough Decisions A large number of items are difficult to throw out. My back issues (20 years worth) of Science News and science fiction magazines fall into this category for me. I never know when I might need to review a copy of the June 23rd 1987 issue of Science News or when I might want to reread a short story from the January 1993 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. There are even tougher issues to decide when throwing stuff out. I give myself permission to keep things for later consideration. But seriously, those issues of Asimov's would get great use at the local jail. Someday. Someday.
- Enjoy the Moment There is no feeling like the feeling of freedom. As you clear out a little each day the cumulative effect becomes real. The open space feels super. Cleaning the house is easier and unrealized stress is reduced. Enjoy each room or closet as you free it from the albatross of decades of stuff.
Now you can breathe.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The 3 Hour Workday
My first exposure to the concept of the three hour workday comes from the book Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
. I have read similar articles on the subject over the years and it makes total sense to me.
From the beginning of mankind (ladies included) the amount of work required to secure the necessities of life (food, clothing, and shelter) takes about three hours a day. This has held true from Stone Age to modern man
. Before the modern era, man would hunt for a few days and then cure the meats acquired. Gardening complimented gathering. The time needed to build shelter, hunt, garden, process and cook foods, and produce clothes took about twenty hours a week per adult. Some days and weeks required longer hours of labor, but over a year, the work required to survive averaged about three hours a day. The remaining time was spent with friends and family playing games, talking, sharing and other pleasurable passtimes.
Then we got civilized. Then we decided that anyone that worked less than 10-12 hours a day is lazy. Now we admire those that work 14-18 hour days. All this insanity started around the beginning of the 20th Century. Only the task of nonstop labor was appreciated.
Working longer than 50 hours a week in unhealthy and leads to all kinds of nasty diseases
. Lack of sleep has brought humanity some of our greatest disasters
. Is it really comforting to know your surgeon hasn't slept in eighteen hours as you go under for bypass surgery? Do you feel safe knowing your airline pilot only slept four of the last 30 hours? Are you a better driver when sleep-deprived and high on coffee?
Where did we go wrong? Can we get sanity back into our lives? I believe we can.
The basic necessities of life took three hours of labor a day on average in the past. Today, with machines and other time saving technologies, we can support our needs on 10-15 hours per week. "Needs" need to be defined to understand how we can live comfortably working only 15 hours a week.
"Needs" include food, clothing, shelter, and in our modern world, transportation. Food costs very little if prepared at home. In 1970, food consumed about 12-15% of our income, depending which study you read. Today we spend 6-7% of our income on food and that includes meals out. Preparing food at home easily reduces the expense to 2-3% of the average household income.
Clothing is also inexpensive unless you need a closet choked full of trendy threads you only wear a few times if at all. Transportation costs will depend on your location. If you live in a large city, public transportation is available and the cheapest route. If you live rural, you will need a car. You do not need a $30,000 gas-guzzler. You need a reliable vehicle that gets you from point A to point B economically.
I saved shelter for last. Housing costs have risen significantly in the last 40 years; some argue even faster than inflation. However, when comparing apples to apples, housing costs are affordable. You see, in 1970, our society (I am talking the United States here) lived in homes of around 1100 square feet. Today we live in homes over 3000 square feet and fewer people live in each home. The price of an 1100 square foot home today is the same as it was in 1970 adjusted for inflation, maybe less than inflation with the housing market problems of the last several years.
Now we come full circle. How can we live a decent life without working ourselves to death? I am not asking anyone to try living on three hours of works a day. You could, but if you want other things, you will work more. The questions is: How much of your life do you want to sell in the form of employment to someone else to get more stuff? Understand there is nothing wrong with wanting and/or having stuff. I am asking you to consider balancing your wants with the selling of your life energy, as Dominguez and Robin call it, and the real pleasures of living your own life your way, with friends and family.
We work 40 years in the workforce because we want to, not because we have to. Most of the stuff we buy ends up in a landfill in less than a year. We work countless hours to satisfy these fleeting desires. If we balanced our real needs with modest desires, we could all easily retire by age 50 or earlier. We choose to work ourselves to death.
Is it really worth it?
. I have read similar articles on the subject over the years and it makes total sense to me.From the beginning of mankind (ladies included) the amount of work required to secure the necessities of life (food, clothing, and shelter) takes about three hours a day. This has held true from Stone Age to modern man
. Before the modern era, man would hunt for a few days and then cure the meats acquired. Gardening complimented gathering. The time needed to build shelter, hunt, garden, process and cook foods, and produce clothes took about twenty hours a week per adult. Some days and weeks required longer hours of labor, but over a year, the work required to survive averaged about three hours a day. The remaining time was spent with friends and family playing games, talking, sharing and other pleasurable passtimes.Then we got civilized. Then we decided that anyone that worked less than 10-12 hours a day is lazy. Now we admire those that work 14-18 hour days. All this insanity started around the beginning of the 20th Century. Only the task of nonstop labor was appreciated.
Working longer than 50 hours a week in unhealthy and leads to all kinds of nasty diseases
. Lack of sleep has brought humanity some of our greatest disasters. Is it really comforting to know your surgeon hasn't slept in eighteen hours as you go under for bypass surgery? Do you feel safe knowing your airline pilot only slept four of the last 30 hours? Are you a better driver when sleep-deprived and high on coffee?Where did we go wrong? Can we get sanity back into our lives? I believe we can.
The basic necessities of life took three hours of labor a day on average in the past. Today, with machines and other time saving technologies, we can support our needs on 10-15 hours per week. "Needs" need to be defined to understand how we can live comfortably working only 15 hours a week.
"Needs" include food, clothing, shelter, and in our modern world, transportation. Food costs very little if prepared at home. In 1970, food consumed about 12-15% of our income, depending which study you read. Today we spend 6-7% of our income on food and that includes meals out. Preparing food at home easily reduces the expense to 2-3% of the average household income.
Clothing is also inexpensive unless you need a closet choked full of trendy threads you only wear a few times if at all. Transportation costs will depend on your location. If you live in a large city, public transportation is available and the cheapest route. If you live rural, you will need a car. You do not need a $30,000 gas-guzzler. You need a reliable vehicle that gets you from point A to point B economically.
I saved shelter for last. Housing costs have risen significantly in the last 40 years; some argue even faster than inflation. However, when comparing apples to apples, housing costs are affordable. You see, in 1970, our society (I am talking the United States here) lived in homes of around 1100 square feet. Today we live in homes over 3000 square feet and fewer people live in each home. The price of an 1100 square foot home today is the same as it was in 1970 adjusted for inflation, maybe less than inflation with the housing market problems of the last several years.
Now we come full circle. How can we live a decent life without working ourselves to death? I am not asking anyone to try living on three hours of works a day. You could, but if you want other things, you will work more. The questions is: How much of your life do you want to sell in the form of employment to someone else to get more stuff? Understand there is nothing wrong with wanting and/or having stuff. I am asking you to consider balancing your wants with the selling of your life energy, as Dominguez and Robin call it, and the real pleasures of living your own life your way, with friends and family.
We work 40 years in the workforce because we want to, not because we have to. Most of the stuff we buy ends up in a landfill in less than a year. We work countless hours to satisfy these fleeting desires. If we balanced our real needs with modest desires, we could all easily retire by age 50 or earlier. We choose to work ourselves to death.
Is it really worth it?
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