Fiscal fitness -- who wants to try this?

We've all spent four months watching our cash outlay. Now let's try an experiment: go on a week-long spending fast.

I'll be doing it from this Sunday to Friday.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm prepping for it by going grocery shopping on Saturday, gassing up the car and writing the bills. I've got ferry tickets for the week. But for the six days following, I'm not spending a dime. I want to see how it feels to deliberately withdraw from commerce.

Anyone else in with me?

Comments

[Kyle]

I'm in for this, but I won't be able to do it next week because I have people visiting from out of town, and there will be dinners and drinks to be had, and probably some tourist attractions to be visited. Actually I probably could even do it with them visiting -- I could cook a couple of meals for them at home, and I get into most of the museums in town free because of where I work. But I don't think I'm ready to jump off that deep end yet!

[casey]

Hah! That's easy - it's called the "lean week after the rent-payday and before the non-rent payday". :)

I am however going to start really keeping track of what I spend. I need to reign things in!

[Antoinette]

I'll do my best to join in, especially if I can get the grocery shopping done on Saturday.

I was recently going over all my accounts, and I realized I have actually been withdrawing from commerce unintentionally for the past few months!

Looking things over, I realized I had a positive balance (meaning $ they owe me) on my credit card for three months running, and I haven't had a single transaction on my personal checking account in April. My joint account with my husband has seen activity but mostly limited to gas and groceries.

I'm not sure where this lack of interest in spending is coming from.

[Lisa S.]

Hah! That's easy - it's called the "lean week after the rent-payday and before the non-rent payday". :)

Oh, I remember those spending fasts too.

[Siobhan]

Man, that would be something. I can't do it this week, but maybe the last week of April.

Since it's kind of missing the weekends, perhaps I can pretend that we don't drink as much beer as we do.

[SP]

I was almost in -- it's the week before trial for me, so I won't be doing much other than working working working -- and then I remembered about coffee. There is no way that I am going to make it through the week without substituting lattes for breakfast. I can almost certainly effortlessly buy nothing except coffee, but a Starbucks Exception seems to miss the point so dramatically as to roundly defeat the purpose.

[Stephanie]

I might have been in but then we lost electricity on our street for about 10 hours yesterday and I had to do an emergency trip to Safeway for ice. OTOH, I think I saved the freezer food and milk and eggs and stuff like that, so well worth it.

[Rebecca]

I sort of fell of the "keeping track of what you spend" wagon around the first week of February, when I went to Toronto for a conference and misplaced a bunch of recipts. I know I spend roughly $60 a week on groceries, and less than $10 on impulse purchases, consisting mainly of lattes.

This one sounds like a good idea, and I'm doing the best I can. Wednesday is usually my latte day, but this week I'll make it at home and take it to work. I had thought about going to the YMCA to get a membership tomorrow morning, and was prepared to hold off until next week. Then I did my taxes tonight, found out I'm getting a chunk of change back, and thought it might balance out a gym membership.

[Lisa S.]

Right on! Join me in no-spending land.

It has been interesting. I've had to plan ahead more on everything to make sure I can get by without opening my wallet.

The one thing that's going to kill me: I have some library books that are overdue and I am going to have to wait on the fine. UGH. I like to TCB when that stuff come up.