This one weird trick to save money for travel – which isn’t what you think – was invented by a mum, will restore your faith in humanity, and your doctor doesn’t want you to know about it
A few weeks ago, Æ emerged from the study in a great flap of excitement asking if I knew how much money was in our bank account. I glanced at the calendar and estimated $X, because it was just after he’d usually get paid, but before I’d got around to doing anything about it.
“I don’t remember them paying me that much!” he said. “When did they start paying me that much?”
And I said well, don’t get too excited, because within the next twenty-four hours I was going to spend almost all of it on rent, tax, food, utilities, school fees, mortgage payments, and miscellaneous sundries. Then before he could rush around the house switching off lights, ripping up Christmas lists, and asking the kids if it was really strictly necessary for them to eat all of those vegetables, I brought him up to speed on his monthly beer budget and the conversation petered out.
All of which was somehow supposed to form a smooth segue into my advice about saving money for travel. Let’s pretend that happened.
One Weird Trick To Save Money For Travel
Lots has been said about this, but nothing I agree with more wholly than what The Snarky Nomad said. In order to save money for travel, you have to have disposable income. Now I know there are people out there saying they “can’t afford” to travel who just haven’t really tried, but it’s best to start frankly and admit it’s easier if you can spare enough cash each month *coughnotforbeersecretsavingsaccountcough* to bring your travel plans to fruition within a year or two, without having to wilfully neglect your pets and/or children.
But neither earn more money nor have a coughnotforbeersecretsavingsaccountcough are the weird tricks I want to reveal to you today. They’re more or less just ordinary tricks: be comfortably well-off; pay bills and squirrel away money for known expenses so quickly your husband doesn’t realise how much he earns any more; make sure you include “travel fund” under “known expenses”. Plain old.
This Is The Weird Trick
Whenever I really want to control expenses for something big, like our ski trip to Japan, I start carrying a notebook and pen around with me everywhere I go. And every time I open my purse to spend cash, I write down what I’m spending it on.
I do this because a few years ago I went through our outgoings and realised that most of the money we waste is wasted in cash. I’m generally pretty happy with how I use my credit card and what I’m buying with direct bank transfers, but I often don’t get my money’s worth when I open my purse and do it the old-fashioned way. Using a pen and paper to itemise cash expenses as I go halves my monthly cash spending quite magically and I can’t even think what I’m missing out on (although it’s probably mostly tea). This allows us to reach our savings goals sooner, so we can go abroad and spend it all on who-knows-what.
Bonus Weird Trick
Check to see if you’re accidentally hoarding any ringitt.
If I had a dollar for every weird money-saving trick out there I would probably know more tricks by now, on account of having so much more money to save. But rather than give me a dollar per tip, why don’t we cut to the chase and you can just give me the tip itself?
I keep a separate savings account. Just a little every paycheck, before my spendy husband gets to it. He has no idea how much he spends every month, and then suddenly, end of the month, I’m using credit cards in order to get by. Bills are bills, but I don’t need a lot of the crap he goes out and buys during his retail therapy sessions. I swear, I’m the man, and I married a woman.
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It’s definitely good to have a system in place when one half of a couple varies so radically in their spending habits from the other half. And I don’t know why women should always get the blame for being the spendy ones, either!
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lol! I love how you wrote “coughbeersecretsavingsaccountcough” I can actually hear you whispering that in my ear 🙂
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coughnoyoudidn’thearanythingcough 🙂
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Whoops…maybe I didn’thearanything. Lol
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Haha!
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Brilliant. I’m starting tomorrow morning. I am a cash user, except online, almost exclusively so let’s see what happens…
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Let me know! It seems like it should be good for heavy cash users. You don’t get that statement at the end of the month saying where it all went!
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Definitely agree with your points. We always allocate a part of our salaries for our “travel fund.” It makes financing our adventures a whole lot easier. Needless to say, we are forced to skimp on a lot of non-essential but desirable things such as Starbucks coffee, shopping, malls, etc.
We also list down our expenses whenever we travel for tracking. That way, we have a great amount of control of our money. By identifying how much we spent for what, we don’t have to ask questions like, “Why are we short of cash?” or “Can you remember what we spent for XXX amount?”
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Plus you can tell us about the breakdown of costs when you return 🙂
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This is a great tip! I definitely spend less when I am making myself account for every penny!
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Thanks! Yes, it really cut down my spending – and I thought I was pretty controlled with my spending, too. Guess I wasn’t as controlled as I thought!
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I wrote a similar post a couple of years ago. It was a real surprise when I wrote down all the discretionary items of expenditure, to realise how much we could save by making just a few changes. At the time it was to be able to upgrade to business class. But right now, due to a change in circumstances, it is simply to have a travel fund at all. You’ve motivated me to revisit this.
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Whether you’re saving for business class or just trying to make ends meet, waste is waste. The outcome will be more serious if you can’t pay the rent, of course – let’s not gloss over that too badly!
But even when it’s not necessary, it’s better to focus your resources on things you value.
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Good suggestion Bronwyn. Recording expenditures is a great reminder that spending disposable income is about priorities. If travel is one, you’re golden. ~James
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That’s basically it. I can understand people getting frustrated with those who say they can’t afford it when they’re clearly spending money on a lot of not-strictly-necessary things, and likewise I can understand people deciding they’d just prefer their morning coffee.
Either way I guess it’s good to make a conscious choice rather than frittering.
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An interesting thought since we spend virtually all our disposable income on travel. I’m a little afraid to know where our cash goes.
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Face up to that fear 🙂
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Love everything about this. I traveled so much in my early and mid-20s because I cut out so much of my extra spending and was willing to live in a slum and eat crackers. Those were the good old days.
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And in exchange for your deprivation, you got not just crackers, but stories! Nothing to lose.
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This is true. I am more likely to go ahead and pay for something if I have cash on me rather than pulling out my credit card. I need to think about that.
My husband and I sock away vacation money by putting any extra money we get into a coffee can. So -anything above and beyond our paycheck. When we get a rebate in the mail, or money from writing assignments, or cash we make from garage sales — all of it goes in the coffee can. It’s “extra” so goes toward vacation.
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Another like me! I feel less ashamed now. 🙂
The extra/bonus money is always a good way to start. It’s money you’re not expecting so won’t miss.
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Fabulist post! Travel is very important to me as well and what you have written makes a whole lot of sense! Note to self to start watching the ‘cash’, the card is intact. 🙂
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You’re like me! You know I think even the little bit of extra effort it takes to use a card is enough to make me rethink some small/minor purchases (not to mention many stores in Singapore have minimum limits for card purchases). The cash is just too easy. Mental note: try to steer clear of paywave…
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Nice to know like-minded people! Happy Sunday (or is it Monday for you?) lol
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Still another half hour til Monday 🙂 Happy Sunday to you, too!
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No cool trick here. I just love travel so much that I really don’t feel any inclination to spend money on anything other than that. Except for pepsi max and wine anyway. I am not giving them up though, even if it meant more trips!! 🙂
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You’ve gotta know your priorities 😉
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Nice tip! My wife used to have a spreadsheet (she loves a spreadsheet..) where she wrote down everything she spent. It helped her a lot. Also, I think she spent so much time working on colour coding the spreadsheet and making it look nice that she had a lot less time to go out and waste money!
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Haha – yes, get a cheap hobby so you don’t sit around dreaming up stuff you can buy. That works as well. Is that why we blog?
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I’m pretty focused when it comes to family holidays and we are fortunate to have great budget that allows us to squirrel away an amount each week.
However, next year my husband celebrates a milestone birthday and I had grand plans of surprising him with a boys trip to Vegas without tapping into our family travel funds AND without him knowing. I wanted his mates to go with him too so I forwarded them all the 52 week savings template. It’s a great way to accumulate just under $1500 over a year without really noticing the amount you’re parting with. (Week 1 you put $1 in the jar; week 2 you put $2 in the jar; week 3 you put $3 in the jar ….right up to week 52 where you put $52 in the jar).
Of course, being in Australia and all, he would probably need a little more but not much.
Unfortunately whilst I’m happy to have him galavanting across America, turns out not many other wives particularly like the idea of setting their man loose in Vegas! We might have a bonus family trip next year it seems!!
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I love that savings plan – seems like you wouldn’t even notice it with only one more dollar going in compared to the previous week. Like boiling a frog – you do it slowly enough that they don’t notice the change (I’ve never actually tried this so I’m going on hearsay; also the savings plan of course differs in many significant ways such as not involving cruelty to frogs, but you take my point).
Pity about the other husbands – but bonus family holiday for you!
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😀 omg I used to have those conversations with my partner too! Until he moved out, we separated our money, got back together but still kept our money separate – and now we never have those conversations 🙂
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Don’t they say money is often one of the biggest stresses in a relationship? Sometimes it does seem to work better to just keep it a bit separate.
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I had an ex-boyfriend who tried to cut his spending and save money by freezing all of his credit cards. The time it took to unthaw them for use was a sort of built in waiting period.
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That’s a new one! I bet the bank loved the constant freezing and re-thawing… but probably more than they would have loved chasing a bad debt, so.
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I’m like @freebutfun, I generally don’t carry cash so as to avoid spending it. Which gets me into pickles sometimes, like when we all sleep in too late and need to put in a school lunch order. Though I think the school will implement an app for that soon.
My tip is to have at least your milk and bread delivered. Like someone else commented, going to the shops just for a few things turns into a lot of things pretty easily. Also then you always have bread for vegemite sandwiches when you’re out of cash for lunch orders.
I’m also one of those boring people who does meal plans. Not for every single night, but usually 4-5 nights per week (builds in flexibility). It definitely decreased our spending.
– Summer
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I’m wondering if I should just leave home with less cash now. Singapore’s pretty card-friendly, like Australia or Europe – it should be just as easy. Maybe a small emergency fund but capped at an amount that could get us out of trouble?
Meal plans! You know I’ve never done what I’d call a proper meal plan, but at one point I was very good at drafting up a shopping list based on 4-5 meals and then using the left over ingredients in those flexible recipes which are good for using up whatever’s in the fridge. If I planned six or seven meals I always ended up with too much left over (and too often wasted).
The order in rather than visit the shop is a good one. I don’t know of a milk delivery service in Singapore, though – you have to get it bundled with a minimum order of general groceries. This is one of the things that gets us at the moment because we always end up running to the service station at night for milk (and then coming home with chips as well).
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This doesn’t really help me as I never have cash (and if ever there is a situation I need some, like last Sunday on the Pop up restaurant day, or when abroad, I’m screwed).
But when I was still at home and we lived on one salary, I participated in a survey where one had to follow up on how much money we put down on food during a month. We have one of the most famous food shops in Helsinki just around the corner to us, they have great selection, good delis (rare here) and fresh veggies, so I loved the shop. And then I saw how much I spend there, and was horrified.
Only a little further we have a cheaper food chain, and as an experiment we bought all the groceries we could get there the next month. The problem is, they don’t have it all and the quality varies, so we also had to pop into some other shops. But at the end of the month we saved about 200e (approx 300 AUD) a month. Needless to say, we’ve stuck to the second one for the most parts (which also has widened their selection and improved e.g. the quality in veggies).
So my “trick” is to choose carefully where you buy most basic ingredients as they can make a big change!
So what trip are you saving up for this time?
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Aha! Maybe I’ll have to write a post about my travel plans. I’m up to the bit where I have about twelve and can probably only choose one (two?).
But it’s amazing the difference changing shops made to your spending, and it came about during a similar exercise – writing it down and then realising where the money was being spent without the value being returned. Maybe I should be looking over things again but with more of an eye to where the everyday items are being bought…
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You should! But I know the feeling, I have plans for the next 50 years… 😉
But the follow up on groceries really was an eye opener!
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Love the smooth segue 😉 But great opening paragraph anyway! Another blogger I follow suggests cutting out expensive takeaway coffee. At the end of the year, you’ll have saved $$$$$$$$$! As I don’t drink coffee, this is easy for me. Beer, not so much 😉
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Yeah, I’m real smooth sometimes :).
The coffee – it’s like my tea, and I agree it can add up ridiculously (although browsing the comments I’m starting to realise it might be chips and ice cream, too).
You and Æ would get along, though. He’s pretty saintly on the coffee consumption, but does like to kick back after work with a beer.
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Sounds pretty familiar! 🙂
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Ha! I do the same thing! But being the freak that I am, I use an excel sheet to jot down everything under categories and subcategories. THEN I generate pivot tables (I’m not joking) and graphs (still not joking) to gain a better understanding of where we waste our money or overspend. Yes it’s crazy, but it really does help.
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Wow, ok! I’m going to have to google what a pivot table is just so I can keep up with you. Unless you’re planning to explain it in a blog post? 😉
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Haha! Well I don’t want to freak people out by writing a post about Excel 🙂 But I will write down steps somewhere and share it with you. Then you can freak people out!
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That’s right – leave it to me to freak people out 🙂
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Would love a ski trip to Japan. I hear it’s mucho deniro! Perhaps I should start jotting things down as well. Today I went out for milk and bread and spent $70 at the supermarket, so I can see how writing down can work. I do have 1/2 price Tim Tams though.
xo
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The beauty of this is that the half-price Tim Tams could still get through (I’m assuming nobody has an argument with their importance vs other forms of luxury spending!). But yes, that’s exactly what happens sometimes. The list says milk and bread and somehow you come away with Tim Tams and pumpkin dip and this new and exciting type of tea as well.
(The tea thing might not affect everyone as badly. I did open my pantry a few months ago to realise it was literally half-full of various teas.)
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Amazing when one has to write things down how it changes behavior. Anything for the travel I say! When our kids were little it was much tougher for sure.
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They seriously do eat a lot.
But yes, the small step of stopping makes me think enough to take a pass on more things than I would expect (and as I was just saying to sparrow that I’m not really that much of a spendthrift).
What amazes me is how little I miss those things – a perfect way to save, really, since I don’t end up feeling deprived, either.
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It’s like keeping a food journal. Do I really miss not eating those 4 cookies? Good for you I say.
It’s bedtime on this side of the world. Happy saving and I’m off to dream of traveling. 🙂
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Rusha mentioned the food journal idea, too. I think I’ll keep a late-night junk food journal. Might help me sleep better, too.
Happy dreams. 🙂
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Good tip! I never thought about writing everything down…but for me, my danger points are when I use cards too much because it’s very easy to justify that I can just pay it back later…it doesn’t help that i’m an impulse buyer so for me cash works to keep me in check…but i like your idea too! May use it to track all those unnecessary items…:)
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Oh, see also Paul’s comment, Rusha’s comment and Lani’s comment! Yes, it’s not always going to be cash, but you can adapt it for whatever place you tend to waste money (or give in to calories!).
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It’s true. Once we become conscientious of what we spend, we become better at deciding what’s important to us. We budget! So many of us just don’t bother, but I think it’s a valuable thing to learn and to pass on to our kids.
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Yes, that’s what it is – it’s just too easy to unconsciously dive into the purse for a small knick-knack that only costs a dollar or two. And these are often the things we can easily do without as well – they’re forgotten completely in no time. (Or for some the credit card is expense they don’t have to think about til some “other” time and that gets them instead.)
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I’ve used your trick on occasion Bronwyn, and you are right, it works. It makes me super aware of my spending habits. Another thing that works is that I now live 30 miles away from where I might spend money. 🙂 –Curt
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That also works 🙂 . Not sure we’ll be following that tip any time soon though.
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Good trick. I’ve tried this with calories — you write down everything you eat. But never thought of doing it with money. Better get started, though. Have a long Bucket List!
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Calories! You know I could start doing this with junk food. I’ve been eating a bit too much of that in the evening after the kids go to bed (well, I have to destroy the evidence before they wake up…)
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Amazing how the little things add up. This sounds like a good tip.
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And the thing is I’m not that much of a spendthrift, yet it’s still amazing how much I can save. (I’m drinking a tea from the local coffee shop as I write this – obviously I’m not carrying my pen and paper today 🙂 ).
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That’s a really good tip! We are unable to use our credit cards very often here, so we use an app called trail wallet. We put everything we spend in it immediately. It’s been great to see how we spend money.
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Oh! I think you’ve told me about that before. I’ll have to do the experiment to see if using the app has the same effect as a pen and paper. Part of the deterrent with the pen and paper is it’s a bit of a pain in the neck – you don’t want a method that’s too easy…
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I guess that would be true. 🙂
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We can do the experiment! It probably works differently for different people – it’s whatever makes you stop and think.
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I love your page. You have the kind of humour I was brought up with. I’m retired so its important to watch those pennies. I use Microsoft Money to keep track of everything and record my known incomes a month ahead along with known recurring expenses. Also have a budget. I know its more fun to squirrel money away from the husband and produce it gleefully when a crisis eventuates. My mother in law used to do that successfully and enjoyed putting it down to a miracle when father in law looked so gob smacked that there was a solution to their financial woes and he wouldn’t have to declare chocolate bankruptcy. lol.
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Smart mother-in-law! Yes, I call it my travel fund but of course it’s also an emergency fund – I get to spend it on travel if we don’t have too many emergencies. Luckily with things like medical insurance etc our risks tend to be manageable.
Sounds like the microsoft money is a good tool for putting things in their boxes up front instead of sitting there looking at it and dreaming of how to spend it before your gas bill has even come in.
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Ha! Good trick Bronwyn. I’m actually the opposite – I have to write down what I spend on my debit card, cash i’m Ok with. For me it seems that when I spend cash i see how much is left each time, but with debit I don’t. So I’m more aware of cash spending. Credit cards are not much of an issue with me as I only use them for large or one of purchases and that is seldom. So, your advice is still right on, write down what you spend when you are using a method that you don’t pay enough attention to.
P.S. That doesn’t apply to my beer account as I am always acutely aware of how much is in there. 😀
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Yes, that’s a good point – the key here is to first find out where the money’s being wasted. There’s a lot of ways to save money by depriving yourself of things you want, but it’s much easier to start with things you don’t really care about, on reflection. Whether that’s happening with cash, credit, online shopping, at a particular hardware store you could easily avoid, etc etc – it’s the same principle.
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I’m glad you’re on top of the beer situation, though 😉
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