This.  This is exactly what I’m doing.  Unfortunately, I am not smart and I picked the worst month to start.  As soon as I announced No Spend Month, the heavens opened up to the best weather ever.  Everyone is eating and drinking on the most beautiful and cozy patios I’ve ever seen.  It seems like no one works anymore–they hang around in coffee shops reading and writing.  Everyone’s taking classes and signing up for triathlons.  People are going to Target.  Everyday.  Did you know that?  Someone goes to Target literally every day.  Fact.

The author of this article does her Superfrugality Month in February.  Doing it in February is so much smarter, because it’s still cold–the coldest month of the year in Chicago–and you don’t really feel like going out anyway.  The days are short which lends itself to more hibernation than being out and spending.

I know now all of you are expecting me to say that I have failed in my No Spend Month.  That is not true.  I haven’t spent anything outside of the necessities.  It’s getting tough though.  The outside bars are a real killer.

C’mon.  You want to be up there too.  I’m only human. 

I will persevere until I cannot any longer.  Or until June 8th.  Wish me luck!

Mr. Kelley talks about building the confidence to create. Have you been creatively discouraged? How did you regain your confidence?

Lately I’ve been reassessing the way I look at my schedule especially in regards to learning projects.  The idea that I’ve been operating on is that I should plan out my learning strategy like I’m in a little school.  I should plan for certain amounts of time in regular intervals and discipline myself to abide by that schedule.  Like in a school, you go to classes for a certain amount of time and you plan for homework for a certain amount of time.  The school model has been a pretty successful for me so of course I thought I would just extend it.

The only problem is that I am not in school.  If I don’t show up to Hindi class there’s the internal pressure of feeling disappointed for having missed out on material or not doing what I say I’m going to do, but there’s also many external pressures–the teacher will be disappointed, I’ll get a lesser grade, wasting money by paying for school and not going to class.  If I don’t show up for a scheduled Hindi reading session at my home with only me there, the internal pressures are significantly decreased and the external pressures simply don’t exist anymore.

I made an effort at creating external pressures by posting about it on this blog, but you guys are too nice.  Plus, surprising not even myself, I have plenty of things to babble on and on about without troubling you with new Sanskrit material so the external “What do I write about?” pressure is out too.  Supreme delusion is the only reason I can thing of to explain why I thought this would be a problem.

I recently read the Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar and stopped this school method of learning immediately.  He talks about his mind as undisciplined.  Mr. Bach, the author, moves from one topic to the next and he allows, and even revels in, this hopping from topic to topic.  He doesn’t force his mind to learn any one thing at any given time.

I, on the other hand, have incredible mental discipline…and almost no progress to show for it.  So when Mr. Bach talks about discipline being a hindrance to learning, I paid attention.

As with many things, I believe there is a happy medium here.  Below is my newly-refined schedule:

1) Schedule learning time:  If I don’t schedule it at all, it’s just not going to happen.  I think this is a strength of my previously-iterated learning strategy.  I simply need to be more flexible with this schedule.  If it doesn’t happen during the scheduled time, then I need to cut myself some slack and just reschedule.

2) Prepare a learning space: I need to have the things necessary for investigation.  While I’m not going to dictate what I’m going to learn or study at any given day or time, I can anticipate what I might be interested in.  For instance, I might gather some good text books, the computer, writing and drawing materials, and whatever else I might reasonably need.

3) Ask myself what I want to learn at that time:  It’s a simple question.  I never ask it of myself because I always assume I know better.  I, of course, am an idiot which is why I have to do this in the first place.

4) Study/learn as long as I like and switch topics if I want:  Don’t pressure myself to do, read, explore, learn anything especially because I feel I should.

I’ve talked about this before, but I think mine is the first sin of goal-planning–doing because of outside pressure not because I want or need to learn something.  It’s too easy to become mired in what you feel pressured to learn or do versus what you are compelled to do.  Hopefully this system will help me focus more on what I want versus what I feel like I should want.

Guys!  This has been a totally eye-opening project.

There have been so many times I see a restaurant or a coffee shop or, god forbid, a restaurant with a patio, and I immediately think “I should patronize that establishment.”  In my real life (when I’m not doing a No Spend Experiment), who knows how many times I give in to that impulse.  I’ve not given in this week, but I have been mindful about how much crappy stuff I want (usually food or beverages).

As Rachel from Small Notebook mentions, her No Spend Months make her mindful of other areas to cut down.  I have also found this to be true.  I’ve been thinking about using food from our pantry and meal planning some more to save grocery money.  I’ve also been thinking about decluttering.

In fact, this weekend, I cleaned out my closet.  I did not take before shots because I was a little skeptical that much would change.  I was wrong.  I was able to cull about a third of all my clothes that were sub par in some way.

I moved right on to the refrigerator and pantry.  I threw out about two full garbage bags of old stuff.  None (not much) of it was rotten (though I’m totally not above that), but geez oh pete’s, that took up so much space.

When analyzing the benefits of a closet/pantry cleanse, it’s difficult to see the initial benefits, but there are some.  So far, here’s what I’ve learned.

1) Cost benefits: Keeping things out of the pantry and the closet save some money.  In the pantry, I am more likely to buy duplicates if it is not organized.  Things also go bad in the refrigerator if I cannot see that they exist so I can put them in my belly.

It’s a little more difficult to see the cost benefits of cleaning my closet.  When I finished, I immediately wanted to buy more clothes.  Here’s the thing though, I usually want more clothes, but now I know what I have and what I need.  This knowledge can make any clothes purchases more justifiable.

2) Happiness benefits: It’s so nice to be able to fit all my clothes in the closet and the dresser.  I don’t even have a “winter clothes” box anymore.  And I have an extra drawer.  Unheard of!  Same with the refrigerator.  Everything can fit comfortably!

One benefit often touted from doing No Spend periods is that you want  to spend less.  It might be too early to tell, but for me, I have not necessarily noticed this.  It has been an interesting mindfulness meditation.  I am aware of when I want to spend (pain) and I simply know that it will pass (Mindfulness meditation in a nutshell, folks!  One Master’s degree well-earned!)

It’s hard to say whether I want to spend less or not.  I’ve thought several times “Oooh boy, when I’m done with this thing, I’m going to buy blah blah blah.”  Except it’s not blah blah blah–I would never buy that.  It’s interesting that I cannot remember what I craved buying.  The No Spend Month is very much like a food cleanse in that way.

So tell me.  Any spring cleaning going on for you?  Anyone motivated to cleanse their spending cravings this summer?

This weekend Chicago experienced the best day of the year: the second first day of spring!  For those of you who do not know, Chicago weather is pretty miserable somewhere on the order of 75% of the year.  The cold is so cold.  And it lasts so long.  And then it gets even colder.  And the summer gets very hot–like old-women-die-in-their-apartment hot.  The three collective days of spring and fall, though, really make it worth it…kind of.

Since the winter usually lasts approximately 18 months of the year (give or take), the first day of spring-like weather is pretty awesome.  Every year it is short-lived, however, because the cold comes back.  It’s not physically as bad as real winter but mentally it is way worse.  The second first day of spring means that spring is more than likely to mean business now.  You can put away the winter coat (maybe)!

Two days down of No Spend Month and I’ve been 100% successful!  What does successful mean though?

Others like Karen at Living Well on Less and Rachel at Small Notebook have done similar projects differently than I am.  They have typically done things where their whole family has a certain small amount of money to spend for the month (Small Notebook did it for $200-250/month for her family of three; Living Well on Less did about $350/month for the entire summer) which included all discretionary spending, groceries and gas included.  Both bloggers have claimed that this No Spend Month has helped them examine their other spending during the month and puts them in the habit of not spending after the month is over.

I do not like cash spending.  I don’t like carrying cash, I always forget to take it out when I need it, and it’s difficult to communicate with Nathan and I for shared cash items.  It just hasn’t worked for us.  So I have a different idea.

Rules:

I will spend no money outside of our regular monthly bills and needs.

Obviously, we don’t need Netflix or the internet or things like that, but I’m not going cancel them for one month just to turn them back on the next month.  If I, like Rachel’s family, decide a monthly bill is too high or unnecessary, then I will confer with Nathan and we can make those adjustments while we are being mindful of our bills.

Rachel has mentioned that the reason she has limited grocery expenses is because “grocery” basically covers all sorts of sins like chips, wine, candy, and other unnecessary stuff.  We haven’t been diligent about tracking our grocery spending, but we don’t really buy junk food.  That’s not to say we don’t spend a lot, or even too much on groceries.  However, if the opportunity in this month comes up where a friend wants to meet up and I invite them for dinner, I want to be able to serve them something nice.  I will track how much we spend to get an accurate gauge on our food spending.

This is not a rule, but a difference from how Rachel and Karen have done it.  Nathan is not actively participating in no spend month.  I haven’t asked him or talked to him about it much, so it’s not like we talked about it and he refused.  I would ask him to participate if I felt that our complacency with spending is ours and not just mine.  I manage most of the finances (I haven’t been doing much managing lately), and any realizations I come to will be discussed with the executive branch and any lessons learned will be implemented.

So that’s it.  Easy enough!  What do you think?  Do you think the cash system will work better or do you think simply saying no to extraneous expenses will serve the same purpose?

I sat waiting for the bus last night after a trip from Whole Foods.  I looked in my grocery bag and realized that 90% of my purchases were not what I came in the store to get.  This has been happening a lot lately.

Nathan and I have pretty good jobs and we make more than enough money than we need (which says more about how we live rather than how much we make).  I can remember only 2 times in four years when we’ve spent more than we make in a month and those were kind of emergency situations (cat surgery, for instance).  This makes me really lax because I know, even when I buy basically anything I want, I’m not going to spend more than we make (again, because I don’t really want a lot of stuff).  The problem becomes that we don’t pay off the student loans as quickly and we don’t save as much as we could for things like retirement.  What I’m more afraid of is getting caught in the cycle of wanting. I want to stay out of the cycle of stuff.

Nathan is really good about not buying stuff that he wants right when he wants it, and I thought I was pretty good at it too, but I’ve gotten really lax.  I would probably be a decent public defender as I can justify anything.

In any event, today begins my No Spend Month challenge.  Basically, I’m not going to spend anything over bills and basic food.  No eating out (my biggest problem).  No Kindle books.  No weird holistic health treatments.  No unnecessary purchases until June 8.

Living Well on Less and The Small Notebook have done this before (albeit a bit differently), so I’ll be rereading their posts for inspiration.  I really just decided to do this yesterday, so stick around for more posts about rules and regulations.