For the lucky few who have extra leisure time this summer, I thought I’d put together some suggestions for productive and fun activities that will help enhance your personal, academic and/or professional life. Some of these suggestions are addressed as if to young people (students, adolescents, etc.) but can also apply to grown-ups.

My suggestions are divided into the following subsections:

• Summer Hobbies - activities with lasting benefits and meaning
  
• Summer Studies - develop skills that will be useful in life
  
• Summer To-Do’s - a few ways to get your life or home in order
  
• Summer Fitness - ways to keep cool and stay fit
  
• Summer Pet Bonding - make your pet happy and you healthy

Summer Hobbies

Here are some ideas for catching up on tasks that may have been neglected during the year.

• Write in your journal
  Write about your past year, what’s on your mind, who and what you like and dislike, your daydreams, anything. In future years you will be glad you did it and also amused by your younger self. You think you will always remember what happened when, but as time goes by, memories do fade and become forgotten. (Trust me, I’m speaking from experience and I’m not yet 30 and have a memory better than most.)
• Make a family video
  Go around the house and take a video of your family going about its regular business. You will be glad for the memories one day.
• Scrapbook
  Organize family photos, report cards, birthday cards, artwork, concert programs and other keepsakes from the past year into a scrapbook.
• Reading
  Reading (even fun fiction) can help improve your mind, vocabulary, grammar and writing skills. If you go to the library, you can read in an air-conditioned environment without having to pay for the air-conditioning or the books.

Summer Studies

Yes, summer should be fun, but there’s no reason it can’t be both fun and productive.

• Learn a new language
  The benefits of learning languages are endless. Learning a new language can help you to:
  • Get ahead in your career
  • Make new friends from different parts of the world. When you show an interest in someone’s language or culture, they are often appreciative and take an interest in you in return.
  • Improve your English (or first language)
• Learn to play a musical instrument
  Music enhances the mind in many ways. Studies have shown that children who study music at an early age do better in school than those who don’t. Aside from that, it is also just plain fun.
• Learn to sew
  Sewing is a very useful skill to have regardless of your gender. You can learn to mend clothes, make your own clothes and other things for your house, which can save you a lot of money. Older and more skilled children can even make their own clothes for the coming school year. Check out one of our earlier articles for more info: Save Money by Sewing Your Own Clothes.
• Take a computer class
  Learn to type properly, use a spreadsheet or database, design websites, make presentations, etc. Most jobs these days involve computer use, so knowing as much as you can about computers might help you get a higher salary.

Summer To-Do’s

A few suggestions for improving life at home and getting ahead on the coming year.

• Get a head start on your Christmas shopping
  This could save you time and money because you can shop at your leisure and take advantage of summer sales. Leaving your shopping to the last minute usually costs more because you are up against a deadline and usually have fewer options.
• Sort through your stuff
  Go through your clothes and things and prune out those you no longer want or need. You could donate the things you no longer need or hold a garage or yard sale and make some money to put into your college or retirement savings.
• Re-arrange your room or home
  Re-arranging your room or home can have a positive impact on your life. A change can be uplifting and produce an overall feeling of well-being and accomplishment, renew your energy and increase productivity.
• Clean out your computer
  Ideally you would do this several times a year, but if you use the internet and download a lot of things, it’s a good idea to clean out your computer on a regular basis. If there are programs you don’t use, uninstall them. If there are files that you no longer need, delete them. Clean your registry if you’ve had the computer for a while. Keeping your hard drive from getting too full will extend its life.

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Back in the day when Madoline and I were concerned (or maybe obsessed is a better word) with weight loss and weight control, we would set restrictions for ourselves - daily caloric limit, no fat, no sugar, no carbohydrates, no wheat, etc., depending on the type of diet we were on. We were never really that overweight to begin with but were obsessed with being thin. From the year after graduating from college up until around 3 years ago (about a 4-year period), we lived in a permanent state of deprivation and craving. And when we fell off the wagon, we really fell off. For example, we would buy a bag of chocolates and eat it all in 1 or 2 days. We’d bake a cake and eat half in one evening.

There was a period when we limited ourselves to 1,200 calories and ran 5 miles a day (after working 8-5), then sit around the rest of the evening looking for things to eat until we were up to our daily quota, and then sit around still hungry, wanting to eat more and planning what we were going to eat the next day when the calorie count started at 0 again. Sometimes we went over the 1,200 and had 1,300 instead and guilt-tripped about it all night. We did lose an impressive bit of weight during that time (which we gained back plus more as soon as we ended that diet), but we were also miserable, hungry and food-obsessed.

Then, a few years ago we decided that a life of deprivation and restriction was not how we wanted to live for the next 60 or so years, so we opted to try the “no-diet” system and eat what we wanted in moderation. And we have never looked back.

So the point of all this and how it has to do with finance? It works the same way. This may not be true or may not work for everyone, but I believe that it could for certain types of individuals. There is something about a restriction that creates a tendency in human nature to go right up to, and sometimes test, the boundaries. If one receives a budget or allowance for something, the natural tendency is to use it all up and then wait for and start planning the various ways in which one is going to spend the next month’s allowance. How often has the thought, “I have $___ left. What can I buy with it?” come into your head when given an allowance to spend on something?
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