My mindset has been changing over the past few months. I’ve been seeing, reading, thinking and feeling that it’s better to save money than to spend it. In part I’m influenced by my wife’s desire to be frugal, and in another significant part I’m influenced by my awareness that I need to support myself into and throughout my retirement.
I have no expectation that our superannuation will still be around in 15-20 years from now (when I’ll be 63-68). If I’m going to need money when I’m no longer working, then I need to sort that shit out for myself. It’s been on my mind for a few years now, and has been gathering strength while I’ve been bankrupt. There’s an urgency to this, because I haven’t had the luxury of planning this my entire adult life, like many others.
So I’m looking at property investments in the future, to turn savings into assets that will appreciate and return an income. I probably only need about 4-5 properties with most of them completely paid off and earning rental income, for me to have my own retirement income from them. That would be nice. But I have to start now.
I’ve been looking at how I can exercise a frugal nature to save money while continuing to enjoy a nice lifestyle that I’ve become accustomed to. There’s a number of options that are available and which I’m thinking about.
I currently have two laptops and two desktops for myself and my wife. They’re all getting old (3-5 years old), so I’m in the process of downgrading the 4 devices to 2 new laptops that will do everything we need while also acting as ‘desktop replacements’. I reckon that selling the old ones will provide the money to pay for the new ones, so I’ll either have two new laptops for zero cost or a small profit. And a nice benefit is that we’ll have two devices to cart around instead of 4. That’ll remove some of the clutter in the house too.
The biggest thing on my mind right now is that I’m probably going to sell my FJ Cruiser. In October I’m going to need to pay $18,000 on a residual, or roll it over into a new lease for another 3 years, which will result in paying $18,000 over 3 years. Alternatively, I can sell it for around $30,000 and pay off the residual and use the balance to buy a used car. That way, I’ll still have a car while being $18,000 better off.
So I’m looking at what I can get for around $12,000. There’s some pretty decent cars out there! But in order to have the feel of a modern vehicle, I’m going to have to get a used luxury car so that it has all the features as a used car that modern cars currently have, while still being within budget.
There’s some really nice BMWs that I’ve been looking at. I used to own a BMW when I lived in New Zealand, and I loved it. I’ve had BMWs on my mind for this past year. I think that’s going to be the next car.
I read about the 2003 E39 BMW 540i as being the best used car you could buy (Four Reasons Why You Need To Buy A BMW E39 540i Right Now). I’ll look into it.
I like the idea of having a beautiful 12 year old luxury car that’s less than half the cost of my 4 year old 4WD… Think of the savings!
Things are changing, as usual. I love change. I look for it, and I embrace it. Change is exciting!
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