Money Monday: Is a Financial Fast in Your Future?
by Dr. Charles Alonzo Peters
Could you go a whole day without spending money?
Could you put away the credit cards and purchase only what you needed for survival?
Is it possible not to spend a dime in our consumer driven society?
The key to gaining financial freedom is understanding and controlling spending. Of course this is easier said than done. As I mentioned last week, tracking our spending is a crucial first step.
Without tracking your money, you’re driving blind. You may get to your destination, but more likely you’ll end up as financial road kill.
Spending money in our society has too often become a mindless exercise – so automatic that we stop thinking about it.
We may have thought about the money we spent on our first Starbuck’s mocha latte, but now we plunk down our cash without a second thought. It’s become second nature. We don’t even put thought into it.
Playing the lotto each week, grabbing lunch at McDonald’s, buying a nice pair of shoes or going to the movies all become automatic.
A tool to put our spending under the spotlight is the spending diet – a financial fast in which you pay only for necessities. A spending diet breaks the cycle of mindless spending. It shakes us out of the spending trance.
The Washington Post’s Michelle Singletary challenges you to do exactly this in her book The Power to Prosper: 21 Days to Financial Freedom. For 21 days she urges you to put away the credit cards and buy only what you need to survive.
No meals out. No movies. No night clubs. No window shopping. No new shoes. Just spending on the essentials.
I admit it sounds painful at first, but I’ve found the experience to be liberating. Not to mention the fact it saved me a ton of money.
The following comments from people in Michelle Singletary’s book illustrate some of the benefits:
“The financial fast was truly a foreign concept to me. Even though I wasn’t supposed to spend, I often found myself purchasing things like books and magazines. But by paying attention to what I spent, I found out that I was spending anywhere from $500 to $1000 a year on books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, and other media items.
It was my heart’s desire to stay on track for the whole month, but of course I fell off the wagon on occasion…… I thank God that spending is no longer my yoke. Now I spend when there is a need. I wait until everything is used up before purchasing and hoarding items in my home.”
- Juanita
“The financial fast has had a profound effect on the way I spend my money. Prior to participating in the financial fast, I thought I was supposed to spend my entire paycheck until the money was gone……
The principals I learned through the financial fast helped me understand how to live below my means and save aggressively for both planned and unplanned needs in the future.”
- Adrienne
“I have been in the church pretty much all of my life. I was taught about fasting at an early age and did so diligently. We always fasted from food and sometimes food and liquids. However, I had never engaged in a financial fast.
It was the most difficult thing I have ever done. It made me face the spoiled part of me that I didn’t want to deal with, and made me more accountable with how I spent my money. Because I do okay financially, I really had to discipline myself because spending would not break my budget.
I am a hat person. The financial fast broke what I thought was a “need” to buy hats. I learned that I could do without…”
- Min. Garner
The first few days of the fast are difficult. You don’t realize how often we spend money. I was forced to change my behavior in ways that benefitted me long after the fast was over.
I quickly realized, for instance, how often I ate out. Soon I began packing lunches the night before work. I started getting up earlier to have enough time to eat breakfast at home instead of grabbing something on the way to work.
I packed plastic baggies with grapes, nuts, carrots, and crackers to use as snacks instead of stopping by the vending machine. Knowing I’d be tired after work, I got into the habit of making several meals on Sundays to be eaten later in the week.
These were all money saving habits that stuck and continue to save me money to this day.
Just as a food fast brings new perspective on our spiritual life, a spending fast can bring you an eye opening perspective on your financial life.
My financial fast truly made me re-examine my relationship with spending – was I spending to spend, or spending out of true need? I realized much of my spending wasn’t bringing me any true enjoyment at all.
For anyone serious about attacking the useless spending in their lives or considering a financial fast, I cannot recommend Ms. Singletary’s book The Power to Prosper highly enough.
So BMWK family, have you ever examined why you spend? Have you ever considered a spending diet? Would you be able to cut out all your non-essential expenditures for 21 days? If you have completed a financial fast, what were some of the lessons you learned from it?
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