Sam has a friend that was his "across the street" neighbor all the years growing up. He was the kid with all the "cool toys." He had the latest and greatest of everything. Remote control jeeps, switch blade knifes, mini skateboards and so forth. Sam always had the same old 10 speed bike and the same old baseball hat.
When Sam and his buddy would go down to seven eleven his friend would always buy a bag of funyons and a sprite. This purchase would only cost a nominal amount of money, but over time, the nominal amount would add up and up. Sam's friend got a job early in life. He worked at jobs to earn money for stuff. Sam didn't have to work because he didn't have any expenses. This is the beginning of the funyun philosophy.
When Sam and I first got married, no even before that, I figured out that Sam didn't like to spend money. I realized that he was frugal because he rarely took me out to eat. Some would translate that to meaning that he didn't like me enough...I don't know if that is true or not, but I realized after time, that that was what I would need to accept if I were to agree to marry this man. So this long story is to tell you about the funyon philosophy.
With the economy the way it is, the funyon philosophy will do many people a lot of good. It got us throught the 24th or 25th (we lost count) grade without any debt and a couple of kids.....we actually did have one loan from when we were master's degree students...1500 dollars, but we paid that half way through our phd. So how do you translate the phunyun philosophy into adult life? Someone told me the other day that they spend 500 dollars a month on "entertainment"(ie, eating out, movies, everything else...I can't even think about what else!!) If you want to have money for anything but funyons and sprite you are going to have to really cut back. Try going on a bike ride. Try walking. Try making something creative from pieces of nature. Try not buying anything for two weeks!! It's a great feeling. We live in the kind of society that sucks our money away faster than we can breathe. Money translates into time.
Now that we are settled down and the kids are getting older, I have been makign a few more opulant purchases than I have ever made before (Piano, and swimming lessons!!) But even these are a great luxury and I could do them myself if I wanted to spend the time and effort. Part of the funyon philosophy is realizing that, "No I do not need.....most things." A simpler, self disciplined life. It's important even in this not to get heady about saving...some people do, but to make money a small, very small fraction of importance in your life.
2 comments:
hmm, so true. things add up! For me it would be the masala munch philosophy. It's my treat for going grocery shopping in Queens.
I like it. I don't know that my husband and I live quite the same way (we do splurge on some items, notably food and hobbies) but we are very careful about taking on any recurring payments, preferring to only buy things we can pay for outright. Sometimes it tough to wait, but at the same time when we do wait to buy something we tend to buy only the things we really want. If it's not something we'll actually value, we tend to forget about buying it.
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