海角大神

All through dating and marriage, Sarah and I have taken pretty regular walks together. We鈥檒l just stroll through the neighborhood we鈥檙e living in, looking for interesting things to observe and just talking about life.

Even now, we still do this, though our walks often involve three children tagging along with us.

These walks are a pretty key component of the success of our marriage. They鈥檙e simply valuable in many different respects.

For starters,聽they鈥檙e free.聽It doesn鈥檛 cost you a dime to open up your front door and go for a stroll.

For another,聽it鈥檚 a great way to get some fresh air and low-impact exercise.聽You鈥檙e outside moving around, which is a great thing, particularly for the many Americans with desk jobs.

The big reason, though, is that聽it gives you a great opportunity to have an uninterrupted conversation.

Sarah and I solve our problems during walks together. We talk about the things that concern us and together we work through solutions to the problems.

Sarah and I talk about the things going on in our separate lives. We talk about professional concerns, about things we鈥檝e learned during the day, and about our friendships and connections with relatives.

We plan for the future on our walks. We discuss what our lives will be like in ten years and what we need to do to get there.

Yes, with young children around, we don鈥檛 get to walk as often as we鈥檇 like. Instead, we鈥檒l have some of these conversations while walking with our children, or we鈥檒l have them after the kids are asleep and we鈥檙e sitting together on the deck.

Walking together is free, it provides fresh air and gentle exercise, it gets you out in the community or in nature, and it gives you a powerful opportunity to communicate with your partner. It鈥檚 something I鈥檓 always happy to do.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available聽at Amazon聽and at bookstores everywhere.聽