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Link love (the reminiscing edition)

NZMuse - Link love roundup with awesome reads from the week

Little BIL will soon be taking his restricted licence test.

It’s taking me right back to my early 20s…

You can’t just risk sitting your licence in any old car. I faced a bit of a bind when it came to sit mine. I had to get my licence pretty quickly before university started but didn’t own a car. (So they told me, as journalists often need to head out to chase stories on short notice. In reality, I actually didn’t wind up needing to drive myself places.)  At the time I wasn’t really in contact with my parents and our relationship was in a difficult place.

So I borrowed a friend’s car to take the test in, and it was a disaster. The car was an old dunger; I wasn’t used to driving it; it struggled to start on a hill among other things and I think it contributed to my failing the test. (Goodbye, $80 down the drain!)

The second time around I leaned on a different friend who had a much better car, and for that I’m forever grateful, because the drive went smoothly and I passed … just.

And don’t get me started on what happened with our car when T tried to sit his! The douchey inspector actually physically kicked the bumper, insisted the tyres were not inflated enough, and after going down the road to the petrol station to confirm that yes, they WERE in fact inflated correctly, he refused to carry out the driving test because it had taken a couple minutes too long over the grace period you get to remedy any vehicle issues. Even though nothing was ACTUALLY wrong with the car, and it was his mistake in claiming there was. Even though that minute would have been saved in the first place if he, oh, hadn’t taken it upon himself to kick the car as part of his ‘inspection’. Again, $80 down the drain.

It is a privilege to be able to sit your licence in a decent car, and I’ve always thought they should provide vehicles for people to take their tests in who need it.

So I’ve offered up ours to BIL, and I hope he’ll take it up if required.

This week’s links

How to crush your goals on a nonprofit salary

The truth about saving half your income

When saving 50% ain’t enough

Adopting an abundance mindset

How to work when you’re going through a personal crisis

Rich lives, poor lives and financial peace

Lessons learned from family Monopoly sessions:

I’d argue that creativity is pretty underrated in personal finance. This is probably because most people have a healthy fear of personal finance — I know I’m not alone in viewing it as a tightrope act. You go forward, you go backward, but there certainly isn’t room to go side to side. Creativity means a potential for error, and financial error is a terrifying prospect.

But creativity is important because, if done right, it forces you to let go of social norms. So much of how we spend our money is dictated by how the people around us spend money and how we think the people around us spend money. Letting go of the normal gives you more options.

As a very important caveat: thinking creatively about money is a privilege in and of itself. You have to have money to have multiple options in its spending; you have to have time and a roof over your head and internet access to learn about what those options are.

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3 thoughts on “Link love (the reminiscing edition)

  • Reply Linda March 14, 2017 at 13:42

    I hadn’t thought of how simply having access to a car in order to obtain a license is such a privilege until a friend shared her experience with trying to get her license while living in San Francisco. Here in the US you can use a driver’s license or a general state issued ID when official identification is required (such as for airport security, establishing accounts, etc.) She didn’t own a car and didn’t plan on driving regularly, but she needed an ID and thought it would be useful to have the ability to drive with it, too. She couldn’t rent a car without having a driver’s license, either. So you really must know someone who will let you borrow their car in order to do the driving test. Eventually she just decided that she’d get the state ID and just not drive.

    • Reply eemusings March 14, 2017 at 15:16

      A HUGE privilege. And as I try to illustrate, not just any car either. It obviously needs to be registered and warranted, and it’s got to be reliable and sound as well really (the first car I sat in was reg’d and warranted but mechanically wasn’t great…) It also needs to pass all the visual inspections on the day (SOOO many horror stories about people in NZ who don’t realise their tail light is out, or whatever, until they get there, and then lose the cost of the test because they can’t take the test!)

  • Reply Frugal Desperado March 16, 2017 at 06:30

    Oh man, the scarcity/abundance post by Cait hit home. I totally have a scarcity mindset and I think it’s done untold damage. Switching to “abundance mode” is so much more difficult than just trying to think different thoughts; old habits truly do die hard. Her “extra reading” section is quite good

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