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A Frugal Week
By Jay | February 3, 2008
I have been alone this week — M. has been visiting his family in Brazil — and I have spent much less money than usual. This is an interesting coincidence — or maybe not a coincidence. I brought my lunch to work every day, and came home and cooked each evening. When M. is here we usually skip cooking one or two nights per week, eating leftovers and then buying our lunch the next day. In fact, the only money I have spent this week has been for Breakfast: about $2.35 per day. Not bad: I’ll save a lot this way.
It’s the beginning of a new month, so I’ll update my NetworthIQ information tomorrow. I think it will show some improvement in my net worth. I made the right decision not moving my 401k cash out of the stock market a couple weeks ago: my account balance has bounced back quite nicely. I also made several hundred dollars in extra income last month selling all the books that I found.
Ah, here I sit worrying about this mundane stuff while M. is in Brazil. It’s Carnaval, which I think is an excellent idea for a holiday. New Orleans is celebrating. The masses in Caribbean are celebrating. Parts of Europe are celebrating. And Brazil is celebrating. Nothing much has gotten done anywhere since Christmas, and the whole country stopped even any pretense of working last Friday. Oh, they’ve been officially working this week, but no one gets anything done: they’re busy getting themselves ready for Carnaval. There are plans to make, parties to prepare for, costumes to buy.
The real holiday began today, and goes right through until Wednesday. Last night was the quietest night of the year in Rio de Janeiro. But at 9am this morning, the streets filled with masses of people celebrating Carnaval as Banda Cordão da Bola Preta (the Black Ball Marchers) paraded through downtown.
It’s the dead of Summer in Brazil, and everyone has a 5-day weekend. Of course we in the US never get a 5-day weekend. We don’t even get an official 4-day weekend. Nor do we celebrate Carnaval. But many of us do observe Ash Wednesday. I sense a lack of balance in this. We Americans know how to work, but we don’t know how to have fun. Carnaval in Brazil is a beautiful thing, even if the hedonism of the cities isn’t for you.
Carnaval happens all over Brazil, and there are huge celebrations in dozens of cities. But not every Brazilian wants to be a part of the masses. The young people love it, but a good chunk of the population of Rio de Janeiro flees for a long weekend in the countryside. They are replaced by people from other parts of Brazil and the rest of the world who are looking for five days of hedonism. In the past I would have been part of the party in Rio — in fact I did go there for Carnaval one year, and just loved it. Now, I would probably spend the weekend in the mountains to Rio’s West, in the Mata Atlantica, or the Coastal Rainforest.
But I would still like to see the parade in Rio de Janeiro one more time. I saw it three years ago and it was a spectacle like nothing I had ever seen. It starts at 9pm and doesn’t end until after sunrise. It is an ocean of Samba, hundreds of thousands of people, and takes place in a mile-long stadium designed for a parade called — and what else could you call such a thing — the Sambadrome.
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Topics: Frugality |
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’d love to go to Mardi Gras in N.O. someday. I have to agree with you that Americans (North Americans) work too hard and don’t have enough fun. In most of the world you start with 3 or 4 weeks of holidays in Canada and the US you’re lucky if you hit 3 or 4 by the time you’ve been working for a decade.
Keep up the frugality when M is back - I think you might get rid of all your debt so much faster.