Year ofIntentional Spending

 

Brads thoughts:

Late in 2022 Katie and I decided that in 2023 we would embark on a year of intentional spending. This is not meant to be a year of no spending, or living some sort of austere lifestyle - but more of an experiment with ourselves to see what kind of outcomes we may see if we were to really put some parameters around our discretionary spending. 

We are very fortunate and have abundant gratitude for the fact that we are currently in a pretty sound financial position. We are able to cover all of our needs and most of what we want without much of a struggle. Some may say that we don't have to do this spending experiment - and we don’t - we want to do it. Even before taking on this challenge we were really good about budgeting, saving, managing debt, and investing wisely. We have an emergency fund, stable retirement plans, we rarely pay interest on our credit cards, and we  save for our vacations, and home improvement projects.  

For the past several years, we have given ourselves each 150 dollars per week that is completely discretionary. We can spend this money on whatever we want to: eating out, coffee, shoes, tickets, gifts, snacks……. You name it. This money is where we have decided to focus our intentionality. All of our other bills and obligations are pretty much set it and forget it so we are lucky that we can really focus on, and have the “slack” to be more mindful about what we spend money on. The things that we truly do not need. 

Guiding Principles:

We have decided to “give” ourselves a few perks based on what we know that we will have to spend, and what we think we will want to do and what can plan for, based on our usual routine. Hopefully, allowing for these things will give us the ability to sustain the project for the entire year

  • Our Friday morning breakfast dates 

  • During the Summer - Golf 2x per month

  • Restaurants no more than 2x per month

  • Amazon orders are only placed once per week (Sunday)

  • “Snack Runs” once per week

  • Coffee out once per week

  • Campus lunches must be for meetings

We know that we will not save every cent of the 300 dollars per week that we usually allow ourselves to spend but when you do the math you can easily realize the power of being more intentional. 300 dollars per week multiplied by 52 weeks per year is 15,600 dollars.

Katie’s Thoughts:

I was 100% on board with this plan from the beginning, in fact, it may have been my idea (don’t tell Brad). Like he’s said, this idea was not born out of necessity but out of the notion that all of our little transactions add up so quickly. So, in order to be intentional about the lives we want to live  - travel to see the world, travel to see family and friends, eat delicious food - we would be well served to challenge ourselves to a year of less mindless swiping. 

Call us nerds, but we LOVE saving money. We have been so excited about getting started on this!

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