Good Times

I found out how to "resolve" my PayPal issue - simple. Don't log in to PayPal at all, just enter your credit card info. So I'll probably cancel my account with them soon!

Yesterday I bought a car. A 2003 Ford Crown Victoria, with 230,000km on the clock. It'd be better if the mileage was lower but... at the price I paid, I can't complain. These cars are supposed to be "bulletproof" - run into the ground by taxi companies, and half a million + km (there was one for sale recently with about 750,000km on it!).

So next on the shopping list - winter tires. Then a tow hitch. Oh, and a radio!

It was a "fun" drive out to see the car yesterday, actually - it started snowing as we left on our journey to Deep River, and got progressively worse. We followed snowploughs, got overtaken by crazy SUVs driving 20kph faster than the speed limit on snowy roads.

We also got to eat lunch in the Bear's Den - awesome!

Musings

It's been a funny week. Some bad news from back home has left me a little melancholy. The snow, that went away for a week, is now back, though I am now prepared with a snow shovel and a bag of salt.

On the plus side, a quick look on rightmove.co.uk shows two houses roughly the same as my one in the UK have sold recently, and they were listed for 10k more than I paid for mine. What was *paid* I don't know, but the two facts - sold, listed for more than mine - are encouraging. Even if I don't actually want to sell my house right now, it's nice to have options.

I've been pondering investments quite a lot. Realising that I probably shouldn't be "investing" all that much as I simply don't need to take the risk. Buying stocks is a little too much like fun, like gambling. If one can remain entirely rational, mechanical it's ok - if you have a job with a steady wage, and plan to have for several years, it makes sense to set up a monthly purchase.

I don't. I have 2 or 3 months of contract work, and then, perhaps, some more "bits and pieces" but nothing firm. After that... some minimum wage work digging holes in fields, growing tasty and nutritious vegetables. Not enough will be left over from that to fully cover my living expenses, let alone invest!

Sadly, my wife and I have come to the conclusion we can get by with only one vehicle. That means I don't get to buy a beautiful Crown Victoria, but rather will walk to the supermarket except on the really snowy days, when I'll... delay walking to the supermarket until a less snowy day.

In fact we went in the car yesterday and spent about $76, including enough toilet roll and cans of tomatoes to last until the snow goes away. Plus the aforementioned salt so the nice postman doesn't break his neck when bringing me 28c dividend cheques (don't ask).

The last couple of days have been much nicer in that there have been blue skies. I walked to the end of the road and looked at the river, today - something I do surprisingly infrequently. The water was black, and the road icy. It gets properly cleared down to the last intersection, but after us? Not so well.

So I'm pretty much wrapping up til April.

Our gas bill is about $75 and our electricity $60 in these cold months. Not too bad, I think. We do need to draftproof the windows and doors better, though!

I'm on/off/on/off with coffee. Can't seem to settle. On: I feel "human" and useful, but terribly headachey and sometimes sore stomachey; off I'm dopey, sleepy, and perhaps bashful as well. But (after a few days to get rid of withdrawal!) less headachey. Sore stomachey.. in a different way. Coffee seems to soothe as well as irritate.

Anyway, that's quite enough musing for one day.

Happy end of the world!

PayPal: You stink

Currency Conversion. Section 8.8 (Additional Fees) is being amended to state that when your payment is funded by a debit or credit card and requires a currency conversion, you consent to and authorize PayPal to convert the currency in place of your debit or credit card issuer.

You just *stink*.

Snow!

Yup. That time of year again. It snowed on the weekend, and a bit today as well.

Hmm. It's nice - crisp and clear and cold out. The cars whoosh by when there is snow on the road.

But it does make walking tricky. Or I'm wearing the wrong kind of shoes. My super-duper hiking boots I bought for our trip three years ago are just too solid in the sole to give good grip. And my trainers are a bit leaky. I need some new boots, yes, that's it.

What do I wish to commit to internet-land, to Google's "not" evil clutches for all eternity (well, til the end of the world in a few weeks...). That my trainers leak?

What is there to be said? The world over, children are laughing or crying. Men and women are talking, sleeping, washing, thinking. Fucking. Flossing. Going faster and faster, but getting nowhere fast.

Palestine... ah Palestine. The story of Israel and Palestine would make a great book, if (rather like Robert Jordan, RIP) they could just get to the end. Well, no use going in to *that* here. None of my business. But oh I wish I could bang some heads together.

It's all about the little things, isn't it. Shall I drink coffee (gives me a headache, allows me to think about silly little things like programming more clearly), or not (withdrawal... few headaches but a fuzzyness of brain). Shall I buy a car... or a new laptop... or give away half my books...

I am learning to play the guitar, what a joy! Sore fingers. The guitar helps me sing, and the singing helps me play, who'd'a thunk it?

Life's good. I am warm, loved, free.

Digging in to Farming

These last two Saturdays I have been on a course in Ottawa called Digging in to Farming, specifically for people who are past the "mm I'd like to think about farming" but before the "I'm running this farm as a business right now" stage.

It was not a perfect fit for me, as I will - at least next year - be an employee rather than a business owner, but some of those tasks may fall to me and my partner in this venture, Lindsay. In some ways we are a venture within the parent organisation - a program, a subsection - and will have quite a bit of autonomy in terms of day to day. We'll have a budget, and unlike a small business won't unilaterally be able to go to the bank to raise money to invest in the business, and so on.

It was a very, very good course, though, and I did get a lot out of it. In fact a lot would help *anyone* starting a small business that is more complex than my current IT consultancy/freelance work - proper business plans were circulated, the talk was about financing, profit & loss, marketing, finding the right enterprise, and so on.

We had an amazing group of about 20-25 people, two seasoned farmers as primary tutors, plus a local farmer who has been running his own business for the last couple of years, after being farm manager before that.

The group was diverse in business ideas - and it really brought home that "farming" really is not a big enough word to encompass all the activities possible.

One "frightening" thing to me, in terms of scaring me off becoming a "proper farmer", is that it really is not just about working the land. Again, like any business, as it grows the proprietor will tend more to a managerial and administrative role.

I don't want that. I used the word "homestead" last week and I'm beginning to think that that is more what I am interested in. Have some land, grow food for myself and sell any excess (or preserve it), raise a couple of pigs for the manure and meat, a few chickens for eggs. Not... business plans, forecasting, analysis to show I can (probably) make money to pay off a bank loan.

So that's the rub. I want to be outside, growing stuff, making use of the land. Not in an office, dealing with HR, interns or employees, form-filling and so on.

What is going through my head right now is that a) if I did run a business I would categorically NOT want it to grow - I would want it to be small enough that I could manage most of it myself, with MAYBE some hired help at peak times, and b) if I go the homesteading route, I could spend my life saving money - "earning" money by only rarely having to go to the supermarket, and perhaps selling the occasional bag of veg to the neighbours.

As they said at the course, realising that you do NOT want to run a farm business is just as much a success for the course and helping people realise they actually do.

I have next year mostly tied up (small CSA work two days a week, soapstone workshops now and again), but there will be lots of spare time. Just trying to work out... what to do with it.

I might just buy a small piece of land, plant an orchard and nut trees, and "potter" - grow veg. And the economics be damned. Good luck to the small farmers making a go of it. I'm just seriously thinking the business management side of it is not for me.

It does rather make me laugh - do all the work of figuring out your business, show you have a high likelihood of turning a profit, work like a demon, and the bank will probably lend you money at a rate of 4, 5, 6%. Where after your costs you might make 2 or 3%. Including the countless hours most farmers don't really count up.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just lazy. But have you seen the profit banks make in Canada?!

Do I "love farming"? Maybe, maybe not. But I know if I was out working 12 hour days to make debt repayments I would be extremely bitter. So perhaps this is not for me.

Just thinking all that through makes the course absolutely worthwhile, and if you are considering running a business of any type I couldn't recommend a proper, industry-related course like this one enough.

Huge thanks to FarmStart for putting it on. I know a lot of people got a lot of different things from the two days!

Bath

What luxury. Steaming hot water, peace, quiet.

But at what cost? We have an old, electric hot water tank. Surely *using it* is non-ecofriendly?

Well, with the wonderful Hydro One Time of Usage meters, I can see exactly how much - down to the hour - how much electricity I'm using.

Last night I ran a bath at about 3 minutes to 7pm. The ToU meter shows 4.06kWh for 7-8pm last night.

7pm is when off-peak clicks in here, so assuming little other power usage happened in that hour (it didn't - just the usual, fridge, fan for the forced air system), a bath costs about 4kWh. With a 20 year old hot water tank.

The cost of that bath is about 25 cents, then. Our average daily usage is about 10kWh, maybe a touch higher. I can certainly see that our forced-air system is using a few kWh per day - our lowest usage in the last month has been 6-7kWh compared to 3-4 earlier in the year.

What can I do to save energy (save taking fewer baths - something I only do rarely anyway!)? Well, I put some insulating strip round the front door where there was a definite draft. I still need to block the old letterbox and cover the single-pane window on the front door. And put some stripping round the back door.

The old water tank could be replaced by a much more efficient version, but I believe it would be uneconomical to do so - I will do it when this one blows up. Our average daily hot water usage is probably in the region of 2kWh. Cutting this in half... just not worth it.

We need better curtains; we could use a fancy new furnace with a better thermostat (the current one is entirely manual, so I have to turn it down when I go to bed, meaning it's chilly til someone gets up and turns it up in the morning!). Again, we'll replace the furnace when the current one dies as the savings are unlikely to ever be paid back.

Our gas bill for the last month was about $70 but they estimated high, I think. It'll be interesting to see if this goes above $100 in the midst of winter - probably. The system is only heating the house by 10-15 degrees C at the moment, and will have to work twice as hard when it gets really cold. I guess the snow will add insulation though. We'll see.

Yes. That is all.

Home Sweet Home

I'm writing this on a ipad so this'll probably take a while, and contain more typos, than normal.

I'm home. Home is where the wife is, so they say - she's here so it must be!

What have I done since getting home? Well, I did indeed put the snow tires on the car. I'm currently going through CDs and DVDs and putting them into big wallet holders, and throwing out the plastic cases. Not sure if I can do anything useful with the cases.

Usually I buy music digitally, but some albums are half the price when bought second hand, even including postage.

After living out of a suitcase for a month, coming home to all this stuff is odd. I want to throw more out. Much more. I'm not doing too badly - one surplus desktop PC and one laptop have been donated to Kara's work.

But I still have 4 tubs of what one would politely call e-waste. A Dreamcast, one UK and one North American Playstation 2, PSP, old motherboard. An iBook G4 I bought for no good reason at all a couple of months ago.

I have started three Canadian "DRIPs" or dividend reinvestment plans - that is, buying a share certificate and having the dividends reinvested directly in that stock. You can do this via a broker using a method called a synthetic drip, but these three are the 'real thing' - shares held directly in my name. Some give a discount on the reinvestment price, too.

Why would I want this? Well, a synthetic drip only buys whole shares. If you get $10 of dividends but the stock costs $10.01 per share, you don't get any new shares. With a 'real' drip, you get fractional shares.

Like most countries, domestic shares have their dividends taxed favourably in Canada - as the company has already paid tax on the dividend. Note this is not Couch Potato - I am stock picking here, rather than buying the whole market. So this is a sideline, a small investment for fun.

What else. I should be buying chicken wire and stakes, firstly to make a leaf composting enclosure, and to make a groundhog exclusion zone for next year. But today I'm mostly taking a break.

And looking at cars on the internet. Always looking at cars on the internet...

Three Days...

Just three days to go til I go home.

It's been a busyish few weeks, and I've learned quite a lot:

1) I am really allergic to dogs, so won't be getting one (boo)

2) Stress is entirely of my own making. It really really isn't worth it. Chill... it'll be fine.

3) Stuff happens, things can be not-ideal, and it's ok.

It seems like 2 and 3 are easier to deal with when not at home. Different locations, different challenges every day somehow make them easier to deal with than the much smaller challenges of home life (out of milk, arrgh!).

I am, of course, very very happy to be heading home soon. It does make me wonder about my "travelling round the states in a van" idea though - but having a *mobile* home seems nicer than a suitcase and backpack.

I think the plan, now, is for me to get a minivan, tint the windows, rig up a bed and try it out. Hopefully in February or March.

My partner-in-gardening has had soil tests done and apparently the soil is excellent - nutrient rich, so that's good. It is still clay, heavy heavy clay, though.

When I get home, I'm going to...

1) Start some coriander (cilantro) growing as it's LOVELY in a salad

2) Put the winter ty/tires on the car (the damn word looks odd both ways now!)

3) Practise my bread baking. Apparently put *oil* down for the first kneading, and flour for the second. I now have a much better idea of what "knocking back" should look like thanks to the Great British Bake-off. Ah, television, how wonderful you are - in really small doses, and where there are no adverts. Thanks, BBC!

4) Sleep?

Reading list

I have been devouring blogs and books about living in camper vans and travelling around the 'States lately.

Highly recommended:

Blue Highways: William Least Heat-Moon (currently reading)

Travels with Charley: John Steinbeck

http://www.tosimplify.net/

http://livinginmycar.com/ (her story has finished but it's fascinating nonetheless!)

I'm currently debating whether I should buy a Ford Ranger or other pickup - for hauling manure, soil, pallets, etc; a Dodge Caravan or other mini-van for doing the same, but with a trailer, with extra flexibility; or a full sized van of some kind that I can still do the hauling with, but convert to a simple camper as well.

A 2.3l Ranger has awesome fuel efficiency - at less than 9l/100km - while the Caravan is not so good at about 12, and most big vans seem to get (gulp) 18.

No rush (I've been telling myself that for 2 years!) - every month without saves on insurance, maintenance, and so on.

Anyway - back to the Blue Highways.

Reasons to be a landlord?

Last week I went to view my house in the UK - that is currently let out.

To get done:

Central heating not as hot as it should be
Flow of water into toilet tank very very slow
Clear moss etc from roof, check gutters
Replace/repair fence between my house and neighbour
Replace kitchen skirting board under cupboards
Replace lino on kitchen (this had already been agreed)
Garage door "spool" counterweight has become unspun
Oven door glass not being held in the right place
Replace letterbox

Now, my lettings agent will deal with all this, though obviously it's worth me checking the prices of things.

If you are handy, and live near the house you are letting, then yes being a landlord is fine. I just want to say to anyone considering it - even though I live *thousands* of miles away and I do have a good agent (and am lucky with good tenants too, currently!), it is not entirely hands-off - unlike investing in, say, a FTSE 100 index tracker or S&P/TSX Composite tracker.

It's fine. I'm a landlord by accident rather than choice, and it has caused me to save harder than I might otherwise (in an attempt to minimise the interest paid to the nastiest of banks, Santander - upping their SVR by 0.5% for no good reason...).

Many people (who are not landlords) say to me: Yes but the value of property is unlikely to go to zero, I feel comfortable owning a thing such as a house, etc. And I understand that.

But the thing is, you could instead own part of something like Sainsbury's - where the share price is approximately the value of the business, so you are getting a whole load of real estate for "free"; or vice versa.

Chances of Sainsbury's going out of business? Far from impossible, but not hugely likely. Chance of all 102 companies in the FTSE 100 going bankrupt? Well...

Who knows.

Ah money. How much fun you are ;)

The Sights of Budapest

Ah what joy - a weekend off! Well, mostly.

I'm here in lovely Budapest. It's quite a contrast from Ottawa - a lot more dog poo on the streets, but so much more... "culture" I suppose you'd have to call it.

I loved this guy fighting Cerberus (I think) - one of two smaller statues at the base of the Szabadság Szobor or Statue of Liberty.

Budapest has trams (streetcars) - and they are usually fairly full, at least the ones I have seen. It's a bustling, vibrant city. I love it.

I also love the old cars - inbetween the Renaults, VWs and, surprisingly, Chevrolets, are Ladas and Trabants:

Awesome. If only I could take one home...

What else. Cool money (the Forint - about 350 to the GBP, 280 to the EUR, or 220 to the CAD. That's like buying everything in thirds of a penny, or half-cents.

Stuff's cheap here, too - a pint of beer is about $2. At home it's more like $8, if I remember correctly! Good thing I don't drink much!

There is the slight awkwardness of being a foreigner in a country that doesn't speak your language, though. Oddly enough, despite the fact I've travelled at least reasonably far and wide, it's only rarely I've been in countries where I don't know the language at all.

But thankfully, English is ubiquitous. It's amazing really. Does every hotel employee the world over have to have at least basic English?

It makes me want to really study a language. I think I'm not bad at them... and I guess with my upcoming spare time, I'll be able to. Now.. what to pick. French, that I already know some of (and would be useful at home... if I wanted a government job...)? Cantonese or Mandarin, or perhaps Japanese?

What about Hungarian? I really do rather like it here...

Kit

Wow, I'm bad at keeping this updated. Sorry.

I am currently in England on "one last" work trip. Hopefully. I'm down to the last 30k on my UK house's mortgage so I have been making seriously good progress over the last two years.

I realised last week that December 2013 will be the 10 year anniversary of the mortgage, which I moved from one house to another in 2007. I am hoping to be able to completely pay it off by that point, but it may be slightly too ambitions (especially when there are other things to invest in - see http://canadiancouchpotato.com/ for an excellent view on intelligent investing/saving - the issue is that repaying my mortgage may not be the most effective *growth* strategy, but it is almost certainly the most effective *cashflow increasing* one).

In theory I am "retiring" in February or March, in order to start (or resume) a CSA box scheme at http://www.maisontuckerhouse.ca/ with my buddy Lindsay from my time as a farm intern in 2010.

So that is incredibly exciting! Nothing has been signed yet, but the agreement is there in principle.

I may also be doing some soapstone carving workshops with my wife at various Ontario Provincial Parks next summer, so next year should be considerably more out-doorsy than this year has been (despite the new house with garden - well, to be fair, this year has been considerably more out-doorsy than last year, so it's all good).

Back to the present moment. Tomorrow I fly to Finland with approximately 80kg of checked baggage. Then on to Hungary. Laptops, printers, and the assorted cabling required to run registration at a couple of small conferences.

The disparity between my normal life (walk to the supermarket, bank, hardware store) and this (taxi to the airport, eating out much of the time) is crazy. I'm quite enjoying it in a funny way - it's nice being with people, where working from home is lonely. The good news is that, once I finally get home, I will only be working from home for 3-4 more months and then mostly free.

Free! At 32 (and a half)! Pretty good!

I think I would like to be in an office for roughly two days a week, with 10 or so people around to chat with, and work on my own the rest of the time - that would be the perfect balance.

Anyway, my current plan is to spend at least a couple of weeks on some kind of road trip in February or March. I am feeling so much more relaxed about things knowing I'm financially fairly sound it's untrue.

That, and I just bought the Fleetwood Mac album "Rumours" (I know - 35 years late!) and it is *excellent*. Good music... makes me happy.

Now, for a hot bath. Ahhhhh, bliss!

Easy way to earn some cash...

This is one for the Canadians amongst you...

Sign up at https://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/Register/145449/

apply for an MBNA SmartCash credit card.

$60 rebate on successful application, plus 5% rebate on petrol and groceries for 6 months, and 3% after that; plus a 1% rebate on everything else.

Yum. Oh, I get a percentage of what you earn if you register through the link above; if you don't want to do that, just go straight to the GCR site and register.

Free money, and money back on stuff you have to buy.. what's not to like?!

Summer Sun

Ah Canada.

Yesterday: 34 degrees C, "feels like" 41. Gosh.

Life is *very* exciting. In precisely one week, we will have moved, barring unforseen thingummawhatsits.

I have two courgette plants, a tomato plant, and a sunflower all begging to be planted outside. And a couple of amazing asparagus plants that probably wouldn't complain, either.

The asparagus tips poking their tiny heads above the soil was so very cool. The stems were probably less than 1/2 mm thick, identical to the tips you'd usually buy at the supermarket except in scale.

So next week: boxes, packing up our meagre posessions - a tall bookcase of books, some saucepans, etc. We're hiring a "cargo van" to move - in the UK it would be a long wheelbase Transit, I guess.

And that'll be it! No more Ottawa, touch wood no more fireworks going off in the middle of the day (what's that about, neighbours?!). And - best of all to my heat-frazzled self - a small window air-conditioning unit.

NOT that I want it running much, but the last few days have just been... yeowch.

I mean really. Well, we're on a parallel with somewhere in France, so it's not surprising!

Then the home-adventure begins: a garden, with the desire to grow stuff in it.

Oh, and room for all my video gaming equipment to finally come out of their boxes and be set up permanently!

The Spanish Opportunity

So.. youth unemployment is high in Spain. Everyone's afraid.

But surely this is a grand opportunity for a renaissance in Europe? Perhaps planting trees, greening the desert.

What isn't needed: millions more tertiary industry employees. Service sector - pen-pushers, or people trying to sell mobile phones, cases, gadgets in shopping centres. There are enough of those, and most of the senior job positions are being held on to by the baby boomers who can't afford to retire due to not saving.

Ok, fine. So the answer isn't more of the same - hurrah! Not more concrete, more commercial, more lives wasted.

I really love Ursula K LeGuin's book "The Disposessed". In one half of it, people are in a perhaps over-communist society - but it works, mostly. When there are emergencies, the people are mobilised to work, for the good of society.

How can the Spanish unemployed be motivated, sustained and utilised?

Or a slightly different question - how can those people be brought together as brothers and sisters in the same manner as during a time of war, but without the actual war?

By best idea would be tree planting. Individual gardening. Self-sufficiency in huge numbers.

Starting something from within - not demonstrating against the government, the lack of money, the austerity. But finding their own solutions, making something wonderful for themselves.

How to get the ball rolling, though, is what I don't know.

There is a huge opportunity there, I can just taste it, almost feel it. It's called meaningful work. Fixing up our despoiled planet, with the resources we have.

What a resource! A whole generation!

Well.. the lovely old house was just too expensive given our "non-standard incomes" (ie, we're both on contract).

However, with a sizeable downpayment, the bank has agreed to lend us enough to buy a small house in the town of Arnprior, about 45 minutes West of Ottawa.

It's a compromise. Not ideal for my wife while she's working in Ottawa (though there is a commuter bus), but thankfully she's willing to make the sacrifice, so I can have a bit more room and - most importantly, a garden.

Not a big garden - the whole lot is about 70' by 120'. But "enough" to get me started, I think.

We'll be really close to a river, too, which is a huge bonus - I miss the sea so much, it's just like part of me is missing. One day we'll move somewhere overlooking the ocean, I think!

The current downside is that we don't actually complete until the end of June and I'm going a little bit crazy. Thankfully I'll be in the UK for most of May. But I'm bursting to take action - and there is just no room to do anything that would actually be useful here.

Like build a small greenhouse or coldframe. Starting seeds.. yes, when I get back.

Currently my hobby is silver... silver coins mostly. Why? Ahh.. I'm not really an armageddon-worrier, but paper money with nothing real backing it.. I can understand why it is prone to government (and, currently, bank) abuse.

Quantitative easing: Oh, nobody's lending anyone any money. Let's just print more, then!

Not inflationary, at all...

Oh yeah - and it's so pretty! Have a look at Fiji Taku 1oz coins - beautiful!

Buying..

..a house, when Canada's property market is almost certainly soon to "pop"?

Are we mad?

Well.. maybe. But, like stock investing, it's all about value.

We're looking at houses that are decent, with a reasonable amount of land - so I can finally start growing stuff. We're looking at the market as if the house price correction has already started to happen... I guess if the vendors don't agree we'll just bide our time until the right one comes along.

So we went to see a lovely, old house yesterday. Really solid, well cared for, within a decent commute of the city, and with a couple of acres. A really good compromise for all our needs. It's just the price...

We'll put a low offer in and see where that gets us. I'm not optimistic, but we are in a good position - flexible, able to move quickly, no chain, and so on. Just slightly lacking in the cash department!

Fingers crossed!

Early retirement? New Year's Resolutions?

Well, my post-Christmas holiday is coming to an end. It's been a lovely, lazy, thinking-ful 10 days, but... back to work tomorrow.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

A couple of good blogs I found yesterday/today:

Simple Living in Suffolk (UK)

Mr. Money Mustache (Lives in US but is from Canada)

Lots in the news about the economy, how in Canada there is an increase in "Employment Insurance" starting this month and talk of pension increases/opt-out employer policies, and lots and lots of people complaining they don't have anything left over at the end of the month.

One blog has a guy living on about $7000 (US) per year. Apparently the average wage here in Canada is $30k. Taking off the complicated list of taxes and compulsory deductions (different for each province), that would give an annual income of... $22000 or so here in Ontario. Or about $1800 per month (at current exchange rates, that would be about 1100 GBP per month).

The last two months have been expensive, relatively, with Christmas and a few expensive purchases. Excluding all that, I reckon the two of us - living in a rented 1 bedroom flat - spend about $1500 a month (950 GBP).

Yes yes, we are DINKYs (dual income, no kids yet). And yes, I earn a bit more than average, though I am freelance and only working 3 days a week at the moment.

It's a slippery slope, I guess. Once you've got your house, and it was at the upper end of your affordability to begin with, you're kinda stuck. Then along comes a child, or two, and, and, and...

It's nice reading the blogs I linked - reminds me I'm not crazy, alone in thinking this stuff. I WANT TO RETIRE! Yes, and I'm only 31. Can I do it - save hard for 2-3 years, pay off everything, and just... stop working? Of course it wouldn't be "the end" - I want to grow most of our food. I want to have solar panels providing some of our energy needs, and have a wood lot providing the rest.

Then all I need is enough money to pay for property tax.

Is it that simple? Doubtful!

During the war...

Austerity.

Pretty common word, this last year. But what does it mean?

Bleakness, saving, rationing... in Britain during and after the second world war there was a sweet ration - all the way to 1953, believe it or not. There was a limit to the number of buttons a piece of clothing could have.

Of course, this was all implemented by the government, and now there is a lot more free market capitalism in play. While here in Canada there is a lot of country-patriotism, it feels like the amount of belief people have in the political class is about as limited as in the UK.

As far as I am aware, nothing is truly rationed. Milk is just over a dollar per litre (more like $2.50 if you buy organic, but that's another story); petrol is only slightly more than that - currently $1.20 or there abouts.

Minimum wage is about $11, and about £6 in the UK. I can buy enough food for a week for 3 hours work, say. Cabbage, yes; pasta on special, or 5kg potatoes for $3.

Austerity? One less flat screen TV? We don't know the meaning of the word.