January Spending Fast

In January of 2015 I embarked on my first spending fast, based on the book 21 Days To Financial Freedom by Michelle Singletary.  It was my first experiment with deliberately not spending money on anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.  It challenged me to be very creative in meal planning as well figure out what free entertainment was available in my area.  Errands were postponed to save on gas and I walked to the library for books and free movies. You can read more about that journey here.  In January 2016, I didn’t do a formal fast because I was working on some aggressive savings goals so that I could retire later that year.  Every month that year was a thirty day spending fast and I was able to reach my goal and retired in November.  

This year, like last year, despite being on my normal tight budget, I’m doing the fast again.  It never ceases to surprise me how many times I think of something I would like to buy and have to remind myself that it will have to wait until February.  The curious thing is that most of the time I completely forget about whatever it was that I wanted to buy in that moment. In fact, I distinctly remember telling myself that I could buy something in February, but I no longer recall what it was!

Online retailers have made buying things so easy that it takes very little effort to click a button and have something delivered straight to my door. This is why I keep all my disposable monthly income in the form of cash. It hurts to spend cash, especially when there is a finite amount of it. It makes the decision of whether to make a purchase very deliberate. If I’ve budgeted a hundred and fifty dollars for groceries, it’s the 25th of the month, and I’m down to my last five dollars, it’s very easy to decide that I don’t need that delicious bar of organic free trade chocolate or Lay’s Lightly Salted Potato Chips (you can read about my undying affection for these chips here) and should probably opt for some fresh veggies instead. 

If you’ve ever wanted to find out where your money goes, get your debt under control, or try to figure out how to save for something big, I recommend the following resources:

  • Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. Hands down the best book I’ve ever read for getting out of debt – so good, in fact, that I’ve used it twice to get my debt under control (some life lessons are much harder to learn than others)!  Dave designed a curriculum called Financial Peace, which I’ve not only gone through, but facilitated – it’s that good!  If you ever have the opportunity to see Dave live, I promise – you will be inspired to make changes.
  • How to Get Out Of Debt, Stay Out Of Debt, And Live Prosperously by Jerrold Mundis.  There are great tips in this book and I still use a modified version of the Spending Plan to track where my money goes every month.
  • 21 Days to Financial Freedom by Michelle Singletary.  Michelle’s book is a great resource for understanding your relationship with money and learning a better way to do things.
  • Living Well & Spending Less by Ruth Soukup.  Ruth also has an online course, Living Well Spending Zero, which walks you through a 31 Day spending fast.  It’s great for looking at what you already own and determining what to do with it, whether it’s finally eating the beets in the pantry because you’re not buying groceries until you use what you already have or decluttering to make more space in your life for the things that matter more.

Have you ever completed a spending fast?  Please tell about your journey using the comments button or by leaving a reply on Facebook. If money or debt is something that is causing you a lot of pain right now and you’d prefer that the world not know, but want to talk, please feel free to send me a private message.

Screen Free Bedroom

One of this years experiments is a screen free bedroom.  A year or so ago, I discovered one of my favorite podcasts, the Slow Home Podcast with Brooke and Ben McAlary. In 2016, they tried a new experiment every month, most of which were really inspiring.  Their success during and after the experiment made me want to try it for myself.

It’s my hope that this change will help me to be more mindful of how I spend my time (making sure my actions are in alignment with my desires and values) and that the quality and duration of my sleep will improve.  Though I rarely have trouble falling asleep, it’s difficult for me to sleep past 5:30 or 6:00 AM, making it impossible to get the recommended eight hours a day. 

What is a screen free bedroom?  No computer, no iPhone, no iPad, and I may even expand it to no electronic items at all (for example, a power strip or electric toothbrush charger).  What does this look like after only three days?  Well, I have no idea what time it is, what’s happening with the weather, if I’ve received any important emails, if there are new tweets on Twitter or pictures on Instagram, what my former colleagues are up to on LinkedIn, I’ve hardly played any Scrabble or Free Cell and I’ve got an ebook languishing in my Overdrive app. 

Can I really trust this old school thermometer?

Also missing are any texts I’ve received after 9:00 PM when I retired to my room to read for a couple of hours.  On the other hand, between the two hours I allocate for reading at night and the couple of hours I now read in the morning when I wake up, I’ve plowed through Dollars And Sense: How We Misthink Money And How To Spend Smarter by Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler and have nearly finished At Home In The World: Reflections On Belonging While Wandering The Globe by Tsh Oxenreider, both of which I’ve really enjoyed.

This is fitting in nicely with another thing I want to do this year, which is find more time to read.  It’s also in alignment with another experiment that I started on January first, to only get on the Internet from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, with limited exceptions (online banking and a Facebook group I facilitate). 

Since I want to have lights out and start falling asleep at 11:00 pm, I have to get out of my toasty bed and see what time it is.  When I wake up, I have to get out of my toasty bed and see what time it is.  It’s a bit of an inconvenience.

Since it’s winter in Michigan, I have a general idea of the outside temperature (cold or really cold) but for some reason I want to know the wind chill, whether it’s going to snow and how much (seems likely and probably a lot!), whether there are any warnings (even though I rarely have to go anywhere), and what’s happening in the cities where all my family members live.  Mind you, knowing any weather related facts changes nothing – I’m still going to wear as many clothes as possible and will be cold when I do chores and snowshoe around the field.

This is what it looks like when you’re oblivious to the weather.

There’s been no noticeable difference in my sleep pattern yet, but I’ll give a full report at the end of the month.  Two nights is hardly enough time to know if the lack of screens will have an impact.

It would be a lie to say that this has been a breeze, that my mornings are more calm, peaceful, meaningful.  Breaking the Twitch is challenging and I’m likely missing out on some  exciting stuff, or at the very least, not knowing stuff when everyone else does.  There were times when I simply flitted from app to app in the morning, killing time until it was light enough to get up and start the day.  Another habit I’d gotten into was hopping on the Internet to research things late at night, whether it was just something that popped into my head or something I read in an ebook that I wanted to investigate further.  While it’s all quite entertaining, I’m not sure it’s really how I want to spend my time.

Why a screen free bedroom?  The dependence and attachment I have to my devices bothers me.  The things I rely on so heavily didn’t even exist for most of my life so why have I allowed them to take up so much of my time and attention?  Am I really better off?

Has anyone done a similar experiment?  If so, I’d love to hear about it.  In the meantime, I’m hoping to borrow a wind up clock from my Mom so I know what time it is without having to get out of bed!

Why I Haven’t Been Writing

Sometimes it’s impossible to write about something when it happens.  It takes time to accept, ponder, digest, and sort through all the feelings.  Since my Dad died a couple of months ago, I’ve been struggling with writing.  Well, that’s not exactly true – I struggled for a while and then I just gave up. 

A couple of weeks ago I read an email by Andi Cumbo-Floyd that captured exactly how I was feeling. 

“When we write, we open ourselves, we peel back the protective coverings of rehearsed memories and staid responses.  We become vulnerable – in those moments when we do this writing thing with all of ourselves – and we find new joys and new sorrows that we have yet to understand.

Perhaps that is why Flannery O’Connor said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” 

So brace yourselves, friends, for the things you know will hurt when you write them. Care for yourselves so that you don’t reharm yourself in the writing.  But also know, that one of the great beauties of writing is that it takes you places for which you cannot be prepared, and it helps you find hope there.”

Often writing has been that for me, working through things, discovering, sorting it through.  And it turns out I’m not ready to do that with my Dad yet.  It seemed like I was supposed to, surely I could write something for Father’s Day, right?  But the words wouldn’t come, even when I tried to force it. 

The time will come to write about my Dad, but for now I want to write about other things. There’s so much happening right now and most of it is wondrous and beautiful and I want to share it with you. For now, please enjoy these pictures of what’s been happening at the farm lately. Oh, and let me know what you’ve been up to as well by leaving a comment or posting on Facebook!

The first veggie every spring!

A bumper crop of cherries!

And the resulting cherry pie!

Red, golden, and wild black raspberries

Strawberry Moon!

One of my two birthday cakes. It was a great birthday!

I’m making some cordial with these wild blackberries

Broccoli

Snow peas

Green and not so green beans

Kale

And more kale

What’s a garden without zucchini?

Garlic that we planted last fall and harvested this week!