I spent every dime this week and have $150.00 to show for it!
January 25, 2020: Spend Freeze January update week 4
calendar
goal accounts
my son and his octopus
yuck!
cooking with mom
cooked octopus I am a spender. In week 3 I talked about having anxiety about not spending all the money in my account. Sounds stupid, I know. Well setting up the accounts I talked about has been great. I literally get up every morning to no money which motivates me to go to work. I spend everything I make by sending it to my separate goal accounts and it’s gone. Just doing this freeze, this week I have saved around $150.00. Now, throughout the month I have been paying more on my debt. One thing that really made having these accounts to send my money to worth it was this weekend when my favorite store had a huge sale. I actually went all the way through the online checkout before checking the cards I have and since I don’t work weekends, none of them had money. I even started going back to” the what can I move around to make this purchase” mentality. This time however, as soon as those thoughts started, I remembered what the money I was going to move was for. I decided my goals where more important to me. I definitely would have spent money if I had easy access to it. By moving it out of my account and setting goals, I had to see the goal named account and think about what I was taking money from. I really feel like the changes I made in my life this time are going to stick. Doing this spending freeze has already made me feel like all future purchases should be delayed by 30 days. The only harm is waiting, and it really hasn’t been that bad once I put things in place to help. It’s like I created a complete mind shift by just creating and naming accounts according to what is really important to me. I feel like I am finally aligning my priorities with my spending habits. I didn’t realize how much targeted notifications I got each day until doing this. I knew I got a lot of ads but when I was actively trying not to get advertising, I really seen how many I had. Since moving them all to the spam folder and removing any notifications, it’s been significantly reduced. I don’t miss the ads; they were a nuisance and took up too much space in my e-mail. I love my calendar. I didn’t even take into account the stress with having to figure out dinner on the fly every day. I get home now and I’m just on auto pilot, but in a good way. I don’t have anyone bugging me about dinner, I don’t even have to think about it, no shopping aimlessly; imagine the stress I could have saved over the last 20 years. To actually have happy kids sometimes at dinner is great. I say sometimes because my son still hates food. Lol! So, I had mentioned that my kids have been adding dinner ideas. My son had added octopus last week. The boy who hates food wanted to try octopus! I bought it and to my surprise my boy had a recipe from a youtuber he follows. He came out, willingly, and helped make the recipe. This was the best night of cooking ever. My daughter cooks with me all the time but I have never got my son to join, never mind find a recipe. Unfortunately, the octopus came out a little too tough and he wasn’t a fan but agreed we should try a different recipe or a smaller octopus. Today he is going to make banana bread all by himself with just my instruction. I am so surprised at the complete change all around in doing this spending freeze. This has really changed everything for me. Financially, I feel like moving forward our travel will be a little more stress free by having a saving just for that. Having my truck account will help with any maintenance on my van while saving for our next. Personally, the daily stress that I usually feel is gone. Not going to the store every day on my way home is great. The kids really enjoy having a say in what we have for dinner. They are included in making the shopping list. My son is trying new things. When you align your actions with your true desires, you get what you want. With less than a week to go in this spending freeze, I’m not in a rush to make any purchases. I really don’t feel like I need anything. My next post will be “How much does my life cost?” on February 1, 2020 where I will some up this freeze and explain our goals for February. Keep coming back so we grow together one month at a time! Read the full article