My first and most important goal is to lessen my carbon footprint. How can we expect anyone else to save the Earth is we're not willing to work at it? I feel I have a special responsibility because I'm an American with lots of opportunities, resources, and education.
My second goal is to live more frugally and simply. I retired early at 54 from my full-time teaching job, trading off money for time. It's been well-worth it! However, since I'm too young for social security and too young to take pension funds- the IRS says 59 1/2- I'm making do on part-time teaching. I've gone from teaching 8 college courses a year for $70,000 to teaching 4 courses a year for $10,000. Plus I have some savings though not enough to live at all extravagantly. So, any way I can cut expenses, I'll do it. I've kept budgets for the last 20 years & am going to look up the precise numbers for my spending on cars over the years. I'll have to write about that later.
My final goal is to help my 22 year old son who has decided to try college again. He's been financially independent for the last 2 years (& I'm so proud of him!) but this will be hard. His dad will help with tuition and I can help him by giving him my car. It's a 2006 Toyota Corolla with about 45,000 miles so it's got many years of driving left & it gets good gas mileage. However, he doesn't get it til I've tried this experiment for at least 2 months. One friend says I should try it for 2 seasons before I give my car away. We'll see.
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