Saving money, gaining time, and improving our spiritual practice
One thing I learned quite early when I started following Krsna Consciousness was to reduce expenses. This is something that can have a deep impact in our lifestyle and practice.
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One thing I learned quite early when I started following Krsna Consciousness was to reduce expenses. It was a small temple with just about 8 devotees, but every Sunday, as well as on appearance days, they would organize big festivals and distribute hundreds of kilos of prasāda. At that time, there was not much of a concept of sponsorship like we have today. Devotees would just collect all the money cent by cent by distributing books. As you can imagine, the expenses of the temple, as well as the expenditures on the festivals, would stretch the finances to the limit. Due to necessity, devotees learned to stretch the dollar, so to speak, and that’s something I also learned from them.
That’s something that helped me a lot in my spiritual life (and even more after entering family life) since fewer expenditures mean less need for money, which translates into less anxiety and more time to practice Krsna Consciousness. This is also a first step in the direction of the goal of simple living, high thinking, in which Prabhupāda insisted.
I believe this is a concept that may be useful for others, so today I will try to share.
One of the great expenses for many of us today is food. Unless one is willing to live on pasta and potatoes, food can be quite expensive, and prices have risen a lot in the last years. However, food becomes much less expensive when we get away from the supermarkets. Every city usually has one or a few public markets, or often street markets, where we can buy groceries for much better prices, usually in bulk. These are the places where restaurants and the markets themselves buy from. The prices can sometimes be two to three times lower than what we pay in supermarkets. The idea of buying in bulk may seem intimidating, but “bulk” in this case usually means boxes of 10 to 20 kilos. This is an amount that we can use during the week, or just cut and freeze. It is also possible to make compotes, conserves, or sauerkraut. When I was living in Russia, for example, we were going to a big wholesale market once per month, filling the car and freezing most of it. Vegetables are very expensive in Russia, but thanks to that, we were eating quite well on a budget.
The second tip about street markets is that a lot of useful things can be obtained for free. Broccoli and cauliflower leaves, for example, are more nutritious than the vegetables themselves, but they are almost always just thrown away, just like beetroot leaves and other things. If cooked for sufficient time, these leaves become just like kale or spinach, respectively.
Apart from what they throw away, at the end of the day, there are usually high discounts for fruits and vegetables that are starting to go bad. Sometimes things are sold for ridiculous prices (once we got 20 kilos of cucumbers for half a dollar!) You can just cut what is bad and freeze the rest, and thus save a lot.
Other things, like nuts, dry fruits, grains, and beans, can also get much cheaper than in the supermarkets when bought in bulk at specialized stores. Different from vegetables, they last very long, and can thus be bought in bulk and stored. Even if you need to go to another city to buy at the best prices, you can just go once or twice per year and stock up. We often think in terms of how much we spend each time we go to the supermarket, but a more effective way to think is in terms of how much we spend in total for a month or a year. I may spend a lot more buying a sack of 20 kilos of lentils than buying two or three half-kilo packs, for example, but if I eat lentils every day, and the price per kilo will be half of what I would spend in the supermarket, it can be worth it. The point is how much we pay in total, not how much we spend at a time.
We can also save a lot (as well as improve our health) by ditching all kinds of industrialized and packaged food and just learning to do things ourselves. We can produce our own bread, yogurt, and sauerkraut, cut our own vegetables, cook our own beans, bake our own pizzas, and so on. Most of these things require surprisingly little work when we learn how to do them efficiently, and there is always the option of making a big batch and then freezing or conserving it. Instead of buying small packs of yogurt, we can just make a big quantity of it and use it the whole week, for example.
Another way to save (that is obvious, but frequently overlooked) is to be attentive to finding local products. Local fruits and vegetables, as well as other things that are produced locally, can be extremely cheap compared with other options. By adjusting our habits to use local options, we can save a lot. In Brazil, I used to eat a lot of avocados (there they can cost less than a dollar per kilo), while in India, I eat a lot of coconuts, bananas, and other local fruits. In Russia, there was a lot of cheap, good-quality local honey and so on.
Once, I saw an Australian devotee ask about kiwi from a local seller in Mayapur, and get surprised with the cost. “In Australia, they cost 4 times less!” he said. Yes, exactly, that’s the idea. One can eat kiwis while in Australia, apples while in Russia, avocados while in Brazil, and mangoes, coconuts, jackfruit, and bananas while in India.
In countries where laws are lax and you can just open the trunk of the car and start selling things, there is even the possibility of buying things in bulk and selling part of them for a profit. In this way, you can buy things, sell half for double the price, and in this way get the other half for free. This is, of course, when we are living alone. When we are living close to other devotees, things can be shared. Someone can buy in bulk and then pass to other devotees at nominal prices, instead of everyone buying separately.
One may think that he is saving time by going regularly to supermarkets and buying things in small quantities, but actually, we pay a lot more for this commodity. Supermarkets usually work with margins of 100% or more. Except for products sold at a discount, you can presume that much of what you buy can be found for half the price somewhere else. It takes time to go to a farmers’ market or a wholesale market on the other side of the city, but you just need to go once or twice a month. Money saved is also time because we need to spend a lot of time to make money.
Just like food, practically everything else becomes much cheaper when we buy it at the right place. Again, supermarkets and big shopping malls are convenient, but often things are sold for twice the real price, if not more. Instead of paying for the commodity, you can gradually learn where to buy things, finding specialized shops, as well as street markets and other places where goods are sold for better prices. This includes clothes, appliances, furniture, cleaning products, and practically everything else. When we research before buying, money can go a long way.
Just like with food, it takes time to visit these places, so it also requires certain planning to understand what you will need in advance. For example, you know that lamps burn from time to time, so you can keep a few spares to use when needed. If you wait until they burn, you will probably have to pay double at a supermarket in an emergency. If you plan ahead you can pay a far better price when you visit a specialized shop.
Nowadays, such specialized shops are often replaced by online markets. Sometimes, smaller, specialized online markets have much better prices on specific items than bigger shops, like Amazon, and we can also save a lot by finding better and cheaper options based on reviews. If we take time to research a little, we can save a lot in the end.
Apart from finding the best prices, we can save a lot of money by just learning to use fewer products. Often, specific (and expensive!) products can be replaced by other things you already have at home. There is no need for shaving foam; for example, one can just use soap. If one is a man and has short hair, he doesn’t need shampoo either; soap suffices. Similarly, many different beauty products can be replaced by things like coconut oil, turmeric, and so on, just like our grandmothers used to do. Almost all products we buy can be replaced by something else at just a fraction of the cost.
Another way to save money is to just learn to fix things ourselves. Every time something breaks, we can choose between calling someone who can fix it or trying to learn how to fix it ourselves. If we pay someone, we solve the problem faster, but if we take the time for learning, we save money and learn a new skill that can be valuable in the future. It’s again the choice between short-term commodity and long-term planning. Taking the time to learn a new skill may not sound so compelling compared with just calling someone who can fix it, but if I learn it, it means I will save not only today but every time I need the same service. Over time, the difference can be considerable. Apart from that, skills can be used to make money when needed.
There are many other tips and tricks that can be added; these are just a few to start. You can share your own tips on how to save in the comments.
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