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Dustin and Scott's Journey:
which came first?
By now, you know that we decided to make November a “no-spend” month. If you are just catching up, we went the entire month of November with only spending money on gas, the mortgage, utilities, some doggie daycare and a few prescriptions. We were intrigued by the idea at first, then it became annoying, but ultimately, we embraced the challenge and we did it! Last week, Scott wrote about the lessons he learned and how he felt about not spending any money, and a lot of my feelings about the experience are the same. For me though, I had another big takeaway from this experience.
We have talked a lot about budgets in the past and looking for ways to spend less money. We have eliminated some items from our previous spending habits and cut others back as a result of participating in Project Money, and we’ve offered a number of tips and tricks which we hope have proven helpful to some of you. I think though for most of my adult life, when it comes to money, I have always focused on the spending side of things as a way to manage my money, and have seen savings as a “result” of my spending habits. My hunch is that there are a lot of people, like me, who have managed their money this way, and I don’t think this has always been the best approach.
The more you spend, the less you have (if any) to save, and the less you spend, the more you have to save. This all gets a little “chicken or the egg” if you think too hard about it, but because we weren’t spending any money, no-spend November really allowed me to just think about saving money. So flipping it all around, I have to ask, “What if we lay out a plan to save a specific amount of money each month and let spending be the result of our savings habits?” By starting with a savings goal and focusing on meeting that amount, we can use the balance of our income to set our spending budget. The savings goal has to be realistic of course and you need to have some kind of budget for spending. Things like groceries, dining out and the other usual expenses are a reality, but this is where you can find some flexibility in your spending that will allow you to more easily reach a savings goal.
Now it’s December and we are focused more on saving than ever before after the no-spend experiment. We have scheduled more automatic transfers to our savings accounts and we are viewing our spending budgets for things like entertainment, dining out and gifts as things we get to do as a result of reaching our savings goals. I’ll be honest, it’s taken me a while to get my head and my wallet to this place, and while I’ve always felt good about meeting my spending budgets, instead I’m feeling a lot better knowing I’ve reached a savings goal.