So how was yesterday?! I’m hoping it was the hardest day of the challenge for me. We had our friends over to spend the night for New Years and it’s our tradition to shop on New Years Day for organizing stuff. She had returns for Target and had never been to Ikea before. Getting to take her to Ikea was like introducing two of my best friends to each other. I was sure that they were going to love each other as much as I loved them. It was perfect.
Throughout our day, I worked through a lot of temptations. I’ve been in denial about how much I love to spend money and get new things. If it’s a good deal, all the better. Saving money erases some of the guilt. Case in point: I really wanted a brass garden table. It was real metal, a cool shape and marked down to $30.
I almost bought it. I knew which envelope I could take the cash from, started to load it onto the cart, and then remembered the freeze. Instead, I took a picture. It’s a really great table…for somebody else. When I start to feel sorry for myself, I remember that I have some awesome tree stumps in my garage waiting to become really great side tables. (Update: 3 years later and I never thought about the table again!)
Throughout this Spending Freeze we are going to face a lot of temptations and you deserve credit for resisting them. Here’s what I want you to do. When you see something you are tempted to spend on, would normally spend on if you weren’t in a “freeze,” take a picture of it. Write it down on your victories page. Then move the cash from the envelope you would have spent the money from into your goal envelope. Then leave a blog or facebook comment and tell us about it. You win!
We’ll talk more about cash and envelopes tomorrow 🙂
You can download your victory pdf here: Spending Freeze Victories.
P.S. At Ikea, I returned $12 worth of stuff for store credit. After browsing awhile, we bought a meatball lunch–Heather got the kid size which was free on holiday special. The kid plate was pretty tiny so I shared my meatballs with her. The adult plate is HUGE. There were lots of things I wanted, but I decided I could wait until February. It has been my experience that if I wait awhile most times I don’t even want the item later. I left with $4 more than when we came.
I love this spending freeze! It’s shocking how much I have thought about spending in two days. Having goals, a budget etc seem so important. I’m appalled by how much I must spend unnecessarily and I consider myself very frugal. I think I rationalize a lot to spend money. It’s amazing how much I don’t need something that I have convinced myself that I do need. Wow. I think I should do this spending freeze every few months just to reprioritize my spending. (When we adopt a baby I can do this easily and quickly, but it’s strange doing it “for no reason.”)