One girl, in order to test herself, decided not to spend money for a whole month. She wanted to learn to be more attentive with her expenses and make sure that it was not necessary to “throw away” savings in order to have fun. The exception was the necessities. This includes rent, utilities, transportation (a metro ticket, in her case), food, and household and hygiene items.
Saving started
For breakfast, Olga ate a bagel and avocado. She brought morning coffee for free to the office. For lunch, she ate pasta with parsley. Over the next few days, she continued to eat only homemade food and tried not to buy anything superfluous and not to spend money on cafes. The next day, she went with her colleagues to a bar, where the boss kindly bought everyone a drink, so she again managed to save.
The next day, after work, the girl spent eight hundred and sixty rubles on some products, which included asparagus, zucchini and avocados. After work on Friday, she was invited to a small cabal in a friend’s house, which did not require her to bring anything. But then Olga received SMS from a friend who had a very bad day, and she asked her to support and drink together. As a result, despite the experiment, I had to spend a thousand rubles. But Olga understood that this could have been avoided if desired.
And again the extra spending
Further, on Saturday, the girl continued to eat exclusively at home during the day and did not spend money. But when her boyfriend offered a drink at a bar on the corner of the street, she immediately agreed without thinking. In fact, at that moment Olga simply forgot about her experiment. And when they arrived at the bar, she remembered him. But since she had already agreed to a meeting anyway, she decided to make an exception instead of drinking water while her boyfriend sipped a delicious cocktail. As a result, she lowered another extra thousand rubles.
After the girl again ruined her experiment, she promised herself not to splurge anymore, but then they ordered delicious pasta, which Olga could not refuse. In her defense, she can say that her boyfriend encouraged such behavior and non-compliance with a promise made to herself. So, perhaps, if he supported her initiative more and she had good willpower, everything could have been otherwise.
Experiment failure
The next day, her friend had a housewarming party. Since Olga could not appear empty-handed, she had to spend money on some insignificant gifts. She eventually left another 1,500 rubles in the store, bought chips, a bottle of rose wine and a cake. In addition, she did not cook food the day before, so she had to eat breakfast and lunch in a cafe.
After that, she realized that she had failed her experiment. A few weeks later, looking back, she tried to understand what she had to do differently.
Error handling
Here are the conclusions the girl came to:
- The first mistake was that she did not tell friends about the experiment and did not warn them about it. She could successfully achieve her goal if she immediately told her boyfriend and girlfriends that she was not ready to spend extra money for a month. In fact, she told her lover about it. But she put it this way: “I want to try not to spend extra money for a month, but I’ll probably fail anyway.” Because of this, he may not have taken this intention too seriously.
- Initially, Olga did not have a clear plan. If you spend your lunch in the office, you should plan everything in advance and prepare food to take with you and avoid spending in a cafe.
- Weak willpower.Olga admits that it is difficult for her to fulfill the tasks set for herself. It is definitely worth working on.
- Learn to lead a social life without spending money. In big cities, communication with people involves frequent exits to restaurants, bars and so on. One way to save money in this situation is to invite friends to your home.
- Olga initially did not believe in her success. She expected failure, and as a result, it happened.
Balance is important
In the end, she came to the conclusion that if she had a different mindset and she was completely committed to the cause, then perhaps she could have done everything right, despite the difficulties. At the same time, she believes that balance is the key when it comes to managing your money (including life). She believes that it is impossible to live in such a way that you don’t spend them at all, so she did not challenge herself to do the same again. But this experiment made her take a serious look at how she deals with money. In the future, she hopes to become more economical and more wise to manage her financial resources.
Thus, as practice shows, no one can completely abandon spending, because there is always a need to pay for basic necessities. But Olga’s experiment proves that if one takes seriously the savings, then a certain amount can be accumulated.
