January Resolutions to Spend Less Money

I have heard a lot of people making New Year’s resolutions to spend less money. I have been doing that for a couple years and it has been a wonderful experience. Why do I say it was an “experience” (other than the fact that I have become a frugal nerd)? When you set out to stick to a tight budget which limits your spending to only necessities you can actually have a wonderful experience. Let me explain. I could really go on and on about the wonderful experience I have had over the last couple years not spending money but I am trying to be brief. Think about the purchases that you are considering in the near future. You may be saying that you don’t have any. Uh huh. I doubt it. You are thinking of curtains for some room or the next car purchase or perhaps a new purse or boots that you are hoping will be on sale. Even if you know you can not afford these things right now you are probably thinking of how you might be able to make those purchase in the future. If you totally forget about acquiring any of these things for an extended time, say until your student loan/ home equity/credit card/mortgage (you name your enemy) is paid off, and focus on using the things that you already have and being completely satisfied with what you have it can be an awesome experience. Not only can you experience the strength you get from setting a somewhat difficult goal and achieving it but you also free yourself from thinking about acquiring stuff or improving the stuff you have with more stuff or spending your precious time and energy shopping for stuff. To be successful at being satisfied with the stuff you have you must shut yourself off to the things you know that make you want stuff. This might mean changing who you spend time with or not looking at magazines or watching certain television shows and throwing every last single catalog that comes in the mail straight into the trash WITHOUT perusing it first or not attending an annual homes tour. Identify honestly the things in your life that cause you to want stuff and eliminate them until your goal is met.

I recently shared with a few friends that I hadn’t spent any money on any unnecessaries in about two years and how it was difficult to part with money now. My friends gasped in horror at the idea of not spending money or shopping for such a long span of time. I suppose I don’t particularly like shopping with kids in tow (and I’ve generally always been too cheap to pay a sitter to shop) so it didn’t seem like that much of a loss to me but I was surprised that my friends thought that it would be so difficult. I suppose that if you have financial goals or needs bigger than acquiring more stuff then you just do what you got to do (or don't do). I am certain that these friends of mine would be able to do what needed to be done if they were faced with a financial challenge. I know they could do it if they had to but they just have not faced such a challenge. These are strong intellegent women, don't get me wrong, they are my friends. :)

The really fun part of spending less money is the creative thinking you force upon yourself to make do with what you have. The library is a wonderful resource for jump starting this kind of brainstorming which is where I came across Amy Dzcyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette . Amy’s book gets you in a mind set of creative frugalism. I have established uses for things in the last two years that I will continue for years to come that saves money and encourages creativity. Finding extra-ordinary uses for ordinary items can be rather surprising and quite fun. Thinking outside of the box is what has me using bread tabs for cleaning/scraping gunk, using potato/onion sacks for scrubbers, cleaning with disinfecting vinegar water, planning our meals and grocery trips like never before, creating our invention box, mastering stain removal (I have never been good at this but I am getting better), redecorating with curtains I found in a box from our last move and mending socks and other garments rather than tossing them. Sometimes you do have to purchase a few things but you can do so in a minimalist fashion. For instance take up garage saling or searching Craigs List and surprise yourself and your family at what you can do with nearly free items. Buy shoe polish or shoe strings rather than buying new shoes, shop for kids clothes at resale shops (they keep growing so there is no way around buying kids new cloths at some point), or admit to yourself that one pair of decent shoes for a child is plenty and you do not need to buy another because those ones on sale are just so cute. Being honest about what you need versus want is a great experience also especially when you really want is financial independence.

My New Year’s resolution for 2009 is actually to spend more money. In two months we will have met a huge financial goal of paying off our student loans on one income. We have limited our spending to such a great extent that resolving to spend more money is not exactly going to be difficult or haphazard. In the last two years I think we have eaten out about four times although I can not recall the specific instances (my husband says only about two times) and visited McDonalds about 6 times (3 times involved a road trip to visit family). Up until a couple months ago I think I bought 3 shirts off the clearance rack and a skirt to get me through post partum weight struggles at discount stores in two years. So this year for us will be about putting those former student loan payments into savings (easier now that we have changed our spending habits) and trying to relax a little with some entertainment money. It would be fun to visit the movie theatre at least once and to get a sitter every couple months so we can have a date night (just did that last night and it was wonderful). Perhaps taking the kids out to dinner a few times would be nice and adding a few activities to our current fun free activities that we may not have splurged on pre-school loan pay off. I know that these little things we do will be enjoyed much more after our two year tightwad venture and knowing that we met our financial goals before enjoying them again. Karate lessons for my son and gymnastics classes for my daughter will also be a wonderful way for us to enjoy having met one of our big financial goals.