Over the past year, my husband and I have mostly used separate credit cards. In full transparency, this wasn’t for some strategy to maximize cash back or anything, just habits we got into with certain cards. But it did make it super easy to look at my own spending separate from our overall spending as a family through 2020.
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How did I spend so much in 2020?
Looking at my card over the past year, I gotta admit I was not happy with the average monthly charges. Granted, it included some things for our rental property and stuff, all our household essentials from Amazon like toilet paper and toothpaste, and some other stuff that isn’t technically part of our monthly discretionary spending. But looking at the bird’s eye view of total annual charges was still helpful to say, hmmm, that seems like a place I could easily trim.
The biggest culprit was, not surprisingly, Amazon.com. A lot of kid related stuff. A lot of pandemic-parenting-guilt purchases and materials to replace school. Easy to justify… but it added up.
Why a spending freeze?
Ultimately, I want 2021 to be a bit more focused on diversifying income towards a more entrepreneurial life. Therefore, protecting any new income streams from spending that isn’t of the utmost value to me is crucial to support the larger goal. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Then I saw Mrs. Frugalwoods was doing an Uber Frugal Month challenge for readers this January and I decided to sign up as part of my intention to do a spending freeze this month. Always nice to have company and a daily email reminder to get excited and stay on track with others.
What about spouses?
This spending freeze is just for me, not my husband. It’s totally possible to take dramatic steps to discipline your spending with or without a spending partner. Presumably you both make a substantial contribution to the family spending picture, so don’t hesitate to start something like a spending freeze by just focusing on yourself.
Also, since my husband is picking up the groceries, it leaves me really no wiggle room in how I implement this freeze on myself. I can’t sneak in something non-essential on a grocery trip justifying it as part of family groceries (obviously an essential category) and such. And when something comes up in conversation that we may want to get, I’m careful not to influence the decision for him to buy it as a replacement for me buying it during this month!
How am I doing with my no spend challenge?
So, now being half-way through the month, I’m happy to say the only charges on my credit card are one automatic HVAC monthly service fee related to our rental property. I’ve had several items pop into mind that I need and probably would have purchased. But they will have to wait.
Math flash cards for homeschool, a blue-light screen filter for the computer, and some swim lesson incentives that were promised to our kiddo who was struggling to pay attention in his lessons towards the end of the year… basically a lot of kid-related purchases.
Ultimately our son did earn a new pair of trunks and a cool swim parka by the end of the year, but I hadn’t actually purchased them yet. He didn’t have lessons through the holidays, so I procrastinated and at this point it feels perefectly reasonable to hold off on those reward purchases until February. Honestly, he doesn’t even bring it up, so even though it incentivized his focus during swim lessons these last few months, he’d probably never really care that I didn’t buy the promised swim parka! Until he did anyway, randomly, 2 years from now. Kids…
I was also planning on buying a level-up set for our pandemic homeschool math curriculum that I held off on for the sake of the spending freeze. And now I’ve since decided we won’t implement it yet this year. So by waiting a bit on what I thought was a for-sure need, I saved about $100 of unnecessary additional expense towards school costs. So, goes to show how powerful the delay tactic can work with spending, even on totally legit stuff.
The other purchase I may still make, but can’t decide… is a shipment of salmon from Alaska. Ok, that sounds crazy as a need during a spending freeze! BUT hear me out. I’ve been battling uveitis for 6 months, including being on prednisone for 6 months, and now a new immune suppressing medication, all to try to control severe inflammation in my right eye. When it’s not under control, it’s painful, and even when it’s mostly under control my vision is blurred and I’m very sensitive to light (hence the blue light screen filter for my computer monitors listed earlier).
In the fall when we were flying in amazing, fresh, best quality & highest nutritional quality seafood was the last time my eye was really better, the best it’s been since this whole thing started in July 2020… so maybe I need to pump up the pure Alaskan polyunsaturated fatty acids again? I may have to order it and consider it a ‘medical’ need. We’ll see…
Otherwise, it feels incredible to have zero transactions showing up on my card activity the past two weeks. Bonus- I’m liberating myself from the endless deluge of Amazon boxes!
Plan for the second half
The rest of the month I anticipate contributing cash to a close colleague’s going away party gift. But I may pull that from my PayPayl account where I have some side hustle earnings sitting. Hence neutral (psychological) impact on the monthly bills. And our air purifier ‘new filter’ light just came on. That will be a $100 filter replacement, but it can wait until February.
January is such an easy time to implement a big spending freeze because what on earth does any of us really need right after Christmas (besides uveitis fish therapy)? I was thinking what other month would be ideal to do this again- just freezing my own spending- one other time for 2021. Maybe mid-year I’ll do it again. Can’t wait to pay the bills and have them be substantially lower from this month!
I challenge you to pick a category or a time frame and freeze some of your own spending. Whether it’s all fast food, no entry to Target, or just all spending for two weeks or four weeks, do whatever makes sense to you. You can do it! A no spend challenge is a great way to audit your needs and impulses. This will help you become more judicious with your spending choices, a key step towards mastering your money.