Chumi Lakshmi

I chanced upon a welsh YouTuber’s videos recently, where she’s living on £1 a day for meals. Not because she couldn’t afford more, she’s a YouTubers with almost 1 million subscribers, surely, she can afford more than £1 a day. She says she’s been doing this challenge to be more appreciative of what she has and to see first-hand how life is for many ppl who are less privileged.   Now, I get why she’s doing this, and I’ve not got anything against her for that. But what threw me off guard was how she managed it.  Let’s do the math here first. £1 a day for 7 days. What would do if you only had £1 a day for the whole week to feed yourself? Option 1: You buy a combination of groceries for £7 and cook several meals for the week. Option 2: Go to the grocery store every day and look for reduced item food or cheap canned food and survive with it.  My common sense says buy food for £7 and cook several meals for the week. Saves time so you don’t have to think of what t...

Out of the blues, I decided I needed to pick up a new hobby. A small voice within me said my juggling clubs would come crashing down if I added one more to the current mix. However, my mind said, “You need to pick up something new”.  When I was younger, the standard hobbies were reading, swimming, photography, travelling etc.  Been there, done that. In fact, reading, swimming and travelling is now a necessity, while photography has become a profession.  Since I had been unsuccessful in figuring out an interesting new hobby for the last 2 weeks without consulting google, I randomly brought this topic up to my colleagues. They eagerly gave me some of their ideas; extreme sports, knitting, crocheting, painting, cooking, baking, blogging, you could cook/bake and blog about it.  I had my reservations for each one of it. I’m not into extreme sports, and I’m not fond of knitting. Crocheting is very similar. Painting is a thought, but the potential mess d...

I’m feeling very fidgety and spend-y.    This would be a good time to check in with some updates on my no buy year. It’s now 6 months into my no buy year, I can’t really decide if it is going well or not. I’ll tell you why and you can decide. Also, I’ve now realized that there are people checking on me and I am accountable to them.   Let me just put this out there first; my main reason for not buying anything this year is not finance, it’s my mental state of mind that I wanted/needed to conquer. Last year I spent quite a number of times binge shopping, just because I wanted to divert my mind, because I felt like it and mainly because I felt I didn’t have enough clothes. I just got fed up of always wanting more when I already had enough clothes, but didn’t want to repeat clothes on holidays, for occasions etc. I’ve got a huge wardrobe in my house, which is full to the brim and another huge wardrobe in my mother’s house, that I usually clear out 3-4 times...

This  is not   a  new  year’s resolution, but   it has  come at a time where   my  recent hysterical shopping behaviour has led   me  to put   myself  in a non-existing naughty corner;   no shopping for this whole year .   Period. I tried to do this about 6 months ago, only because I went crazy shopping during my holiday trips in the middle of the year.  I went cold turkey back then, and it didn’t help at all. In fact, it back fired on me and made me shop even more in the next few months. I got into the habit of seeking some retail therapy when I needed to release some stress or displayed an unhealthy amount of sympathy for myself. I called it treating myself; that is never a good reason to do it. The realisation struck, and i devised another plan. I decided that I was going to shop all I wanted up till boxing day, and that will be my last for a year. If I’m we...