Take the February Challenge: Spend Money Only on Essentials for 28 Days

Do you recklessly spend money during the holidays? The average American spends between $700 and $800 on holiday gifts every year. Toss in the additional cost of travel to visit family and friends, and the numbers for December can put a dent in any budget.

Then January rolls around, and fabulous sales call out to even the most conservative shopper. By the end of the month, it may be a little scary to look back and calculate how much money was spent on the pursuit of seasonal fun and irresistible bargains.

So…now what?

Spend Money Only on Essentials for 28 Days

Jan and I invite you to take the February Challenge—spend money on nothing but essentials for 28 days. This means you continue to pay for things like your mortgage or rent, utilities, credit card bills, insurance premiums, loans, car payment, and gym membership; you get to buy food and prescriptions and pay for public transportation; but unless it’s an absolutely necessary expenditure, it’s taboo for the month.

Some suggestions for cutting back include:

• No designer coffee on the way to work—no matter how indispensible you consider caffeine to be. Instead, make a latte at home and take it to the office in a travel mug.
• No lunches out—unless requested by a client or otherwise required. Brown-bag a healthy sandwich you’ve made yourself or take leftovers from dinner.
• No clothes shopping—at all. Surely you can get through the month with the things you have in your closet.
• No movies, concerts, or plays. No DVDs or CDs. Watch or listen to what you already own.
• No restaurant dinners or take-out food. Cook—whether it’s simple or more complex. Do it as a family, giving each person a task to complete.

We’ll leave it up to you to think of more ways to reduce expenses. In fact, we invite you to share in the comments section any strategies you might come up with. With a little bit of creativity, you just might make a dramatic difference in your spending habits in just one month. And who knows—when you see the financial difference your sacrifices have made, you might not want to go back to your old ways when March blows in.

Elle Gianforte is an award-winning writer and published author whose work includes non-fiction books on a variety of subjects, including adoption, fashion, food, design, healthcare, and memoir. She is currently co-authoring a new book, Don’t Stop Now, Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life (DontStopNow.us). You can see a complete list of books on her Amazon author page.