Your Funny Paper

I sort of addressed this in a post way back when, but as I head toward spring break and what's likely to be a move this summer, I thought it might be good to gather my thoughts on money, travel, and personal belongings as a kind of milestone of how I've come to the more-mindful place I am today. Below the jump: boring writing about saving for travel, quality clothing, and other confusingly connected ramblings!
One of the central realities that made 2016 what it was (well, the summer/fun part of it, at least) was the discovery that living abroad for the summer would be cheaper than staying in the States. I know I've mentioned it here before; I think I keep bringing it up because at some level I've got a little of that good old Protestant Work Ethic Guilt, that I need to explain and justify having taken the trip that I took. But it also happens to be true! Zooming in a little more on how that funding worked, though, gets at how I've come to realize I budget most effectively... and what opportunities have opened up and continued to be possible as a result.

Briefly: my first month in Europe I was based out of Vienna. Surprised at the reasonable apartment rental prices, I decided to keep things very pared-back: a studio, with good location but nothing fancy. The point of being here was to do research and explore the city. By finding a place that was literally less than half my rent back in Boston, I was able to store away enough money to do some weekend trips to the still-cheap (though not as cheap as they legendarily once were) cities of Prague, Budapest, and Krakow. It's the most rudimentary of things, but I find it helpful to frame it in those terms: being thrifty in one area meant I had some financial room to enjoy another area. By being mindful about it when I could be flexible - not grabbing the first apartment I saw, not insisting on American-style amenities - I opened up the opportunity to do more elsewhere. This was doubly true when pattern-of-living stuff entered the picture. There's something delightful and novel about getting groceries at the market in Emilia-Romagna, Vienna, Berlin - for the cost of one counter-service meal out, you can stock up on seasonal, local ingredients and make your own Austrian/Italian/German meals for days. And that, too, expands the list of what you can do.

The same generally was true of the rest of the trip. If I could share an apartment with a friend, it made a few more excursions possible; staying with friends in the UK meant that I could afford the steep costs of Scandinavia. Making grocery-bought breakfasts of yogurt or fish-egg-paste-on-toast (not a fan, but you gotta try the local customs) meant that I could visit a restaurant that René Redzepi likes. (True: he actually sat next to me with his family! Geek out food fan moment.)

It's a general principle: wherever you can save money with a little time or thoughtfulness, do it, and you'll open up broad possibilities. My upcoming trip to London/Paris is made possible by a trove of airline points, and my AirBnB stays are made possible by a series of tutoring sessions, but it all moves quicker if I ignore the urge to grab a burger on the way home or order a pizza when I'm feeling tired. In the moment it's a pain, but usually once I've made my own meal, I'm just as happy and $15-20 richer, and over the span of a few weeks I'm well on my way to saving what I need for a trip whose memories matter a lot more than a generic Chipotle dinner would.

This summer, I may be heading abroad again for a couple of long-term city stays, depending on a few up-in-the-air factors mostly involving the timing and details of the next job and move back to Chicago; that in and of itself is a great motivation to save. Again, I've spent the year stockpiling cash to cover summer rent in Boston, which is enough for rent and living expenses abroad, but every time I cook for myself it's the cost of a budget airline flight or a dent into the price of a guided tour.
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This attention to when, where, and why I'm spending has recently spread into the realm of clothing for me. Over the past year or so I've gotten a little more attuned to style; a Marie Kondo cleanse of my possessions really made evident what "sparks joy" (to use her phrase) and thus clarified what I like to wear. (Her book, by the way, is a great read. It's a little froo-froo, but for every two goofy ideas there's one really transformative one, and on the whole the book is actually an argument toward mindfulness, gratitude, and awareness. I cannot overemphasize how good it is to center these things in your daily life. Her method seems simple, but read the book.)

That combined with my love for the rare non-snobby menswear blog Put This On, founded by NPR and Maximum Fun's Jesse Thorn. What I love about this blog: it's not about trends or chasing fads, and it's absolutely also not about sneering at people who don't own a $10,000 watch. (Yes, those are very much things you find when you go looking for men's style advice online, hooray for men on the internet.) Instead, it's about awareness of your own style, paying attention to what looks good on you and why, and being mindful of quality and longevity. The blog is also heavily invested in the value of thrift shopping. In short, they argue that how you dress sends signals to the world around you, and being mindful of that is not a bad thing.

Those two things met up with the work of Erik Loomis, one of my favorite political bloggers, whose writing as a historian focuses on labor practices, and who has recently written with great urgency about how offshoring and outsourcing has allowed the fashion industry to claim deniability for the slave-labor conditions under which most clothing is made. Where Put This On keyed me into why a $45 pair of shoes will likely not last, and generally won't look very good, Loomis's writing brought a moral dimension to the question, asking how exactly we think that a $45 shoe gets made.

The end result of all of this is that I'm in the midst of gradually rebuilding my wardrobe from its skeletal post-Kondo form, leaning on thrift stores and Ebay when possible, and saving my pennies to get quality pieces that have been made in humane ways. It's become a fun part of my travel: when I'm in the UK, I visit their amazing charity shops (where you can usually find menswear that hasn't been as worn out as it is in US thrift shops), and I'll occasionally visit high-quality makers of shoes, shirts, etc. I can rarely pick up new pieces - but again, if I'm thrifty where I can afford to be, it allows me to invest in areas like this. Sacrificing a little short-term convenience leads to long-term value.

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Obviously these systems aren't perfect. Sometimes I get home having worked through lunch and brain-dead-hungrily order Indian delivery when I have groceries in the fridge. Sometimes I order a pair of shoes because it's a crazy good deal and have to return them when I look at the reality of my budget for the month.

But this past year has really hammered home the value of tending thoughtfully to what I have, making it clear how far a little saving and thoughtfulness can take me. I'm hopeful that in the year to come, when I hope to be working with a bit more income and a bit more daily structure, I can keep these principles intact and find my way to keep exploring in a way that is financially savvy but experientially expansive.