Make New Friends Holistic Spending Plan

Make New Friends Holistic Spending Plan
Make New Friends Holistic Spending Plan
Detail from wood engraving by J Macfarlane published in Supplement to the Illustrated Australian News July 23, 1887, via State Library Victoria

Something that has been on my list for a while is meeting new people, and I know it’s something many people add to their list of resolutions as well. So let’s look at a Make New Friends Holistic Spending Plan.

Vision, Mission, Virtues

It might be one of those obvious things, but I’m going to mention it anyway. You don’t want to just meet new people, you want to meet people that share your interests and that you will want to spend time with; you want to make new friends. If you’re not fit and active for example, you probably won’t want to be friends with people who like to go hiking at 6 am on a Sunday.

Like many things in life, effort in the friendship direction can be leveraged in another. So we’re imagining a future that includes developing our wine knowledge as well as making new friends.

Vision

An ideal universe:

I know and understand wine; people often ask my opinion. I meet with my friends and we enjoy drinking and discussing wine.

Mission

Clearly, that kind of knowledge doesn’t appear overnight, so you need a mid-term plan to make it happen:

Develop my wine knowledge by attending classes, taking trips, talking to someliers, and buying wine guides.

Virtues

Someone who appreciates fine wine might also appreciate Knowledge, Friendship, and Adventure.

Goal

For the next twelve months, our proto-oenophiliac (wine appreciator) wants to start with the basics. That means attending an appreciation class and attempting to get to know their classmates. If all goes well, it may progress to meeting for meals where they can talk to experienced wine waiters, and visiting local vineyards together.

For our purposes, a HARD goal:

Make new friends at a wine appreciation class.

This goal requires several hours of dedicated effort each week for class attendance, and hopefully a social event at a venue as well. And this needs money, as well as some extra funds for buying wine to try at home.

Basic Spending Plan

We’ll use the same basic proportional plan with the after-tax monthly income of $3,435.

Department
Food
Housing
Clothing
Operations
Happiness
TOTAL

% of income
25%
20%
15%
15%
25%
100%

Amount
$859
$687
$515
$515
$859
$3,435

Considerations

The best opportunity to develop ongoing relationships is at a class that takes place over several weeks rather than a single day. There’s also potential to go through Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced courses together. Or perhaps niche areas like food pairing, or regional focus (e.g., French wine).

A short course of 5 weekly sessions run by a venue or wine merchant might be $250 or more depending on whether there’s food involved or just the wine. Or you could attend a technical college for industry training which would take place over a longer period of time and could involve work placements and assessments. Additionally, $50 – $100 for weekly social events, and say $75 for home sampling wine.

For five weeks that’s $1, 875, and if you took three courses over the year $5,625. Or just under $470 per month you need to make space for. That’s 14% of the budget, so you might prefer to look for a cheaper course, and invite your new friends to your home rather than meeting out.

Amendments

For the sake of argument, I’ll be rearranging the budget to provide that $470.

  • Food: If you are eating out once a week, you may try to cut your overall food budget a little to provide some wiggle room. This would preferably be on your discretionary treats rather than your subsistence needs.
  • Housing: Not worth moving house for a course.
  • Clothing: You might be tempted to spend more on clothes because you are socialising with the same people. You don’t need to; you will all be focusing on the wine, not each other’s sartorial choices.
  • Operations: While there is probably some fat you could trim here, you may not see the benefit early enough.
  • Happy Life: Friends make you happy, so this is where your course costs go. Your friendship costs are more likely to come from other happy life costs like lunches, movies, and other social activities that you cut back to make the time for the wine appreciation courses.

Potential Make New Friends Holistic Spending Plan

You’ll make other changes according to your particular circumstances, but here is one potential spending plan:

Department
Food
Housing
Clothing
Operations
Happiness
TOTAL

% of income
24%
20%
15%
15%
26%
100%

Amount
$845
$687
$515
$515
$888
$3,435

There is just a slight adjustment to the Food and Operations departments, while the bulk of the cost comes from a rearrangement of Happy Life.

Outcome

How much you actually spend on this will ultimately depend on your income and the kind of people you hope to make friends with. You will probably only face course costs for one year, though next year you and your new friends might decide to take a weekend trip or two to a winery instead.


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