We ended up richer, but not in the way we expected
When you’ve committed to a month of no spending, the scariest sound in the world goes something like this: glug, glug, gorgle, glug, followed by my wife saying, “Oh, God. Honey? We need to call a plumber!”
Our experiment in money-free living had been cruising along beautifully. We were happily eating our way through the pantry, borrowing instead of buying, and feeling the burn from our free seven-day trial gym membership. But now – and on a holiday weekend at 11 pm, naturally – a grotesque and putrid black ooze began mushrooming up from the shower drain, which could mean only one thing: an overtime service call from a plumber.
“Think!” I thought as my wife, Ruth, rummaged for the plumber’s business card. “Think.”
I was still a no-spending newbie, but already I was one with the Zen of money-free living. Take a deep breath. There’s always a way around opening your wallet.
The idea to stop spending had been percolating for a while, but it was a trip to Target one afternoon that finally broke me. With our four-year-old, Sebastian, in tow, Ruth and I loaded up on packs of underwear, bath mats, barbecue gear, Spider-Man toys, kitchen gadgets, and a plug-in thingy guaranteed to kill mosquitoes. As we approached the checkout aisle, I thought, We don’t need any of this junk, and we abandoned the cart (after distracting Sebastian with ice cream), saving a good $300.
That got me thinking about all our pointless expenses: DVDs by mail, lunches out, car washes, “bargain” toys, fancy coffee drinks, and just about everything I’ve ever bought on eBay and Amazon. Especially given the current economic climate, not to mention the state of our landfills, it all suddenly felt like excess. With a promise that we’d stop if it was killing us, I convinced the family to take the giant leap into frugality.
The rules were that we would buy nothing for 30 days except absolute essentials, like fresh milk and fruit; and even there, after one too many “essential” trips to the market those first few days, I capped expenses at $100 for the rest of the month. A handful of key outlays like our mortgage, utilities, and Sebastian’s preschool tuition were excused, but restaurants, parking, clothing, toiletries, internet access, babysitting, and, yes, petrol, were now in the no-buy zone.
So were overpriced plumbing repairs, if I could help it. Unfortunately, taking a plunger to the shower drain only served to anger the sewage gods, and I watched the muck grow thicker.
Searching online (thank you, dear neighbour, for not using password protection), I read about poor souls who’d paid $200, $400, and even $1500 to have this exact problem fixed. That’s when I stumbled onto the Dawnbrigade.
On a website called thriftyfun.com, thousands of users posted tip after money-saving tip on conserving cash. There wasn’t a crisis on earth, it seemed, that couldn’t be averted with some combination of baking soda, white vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and a certain dishwashing liquid. I squirted a shot of Dawn in a kettle of boiling water, poured it into the shower, and the goop slrrrrged down the drain. Materials used: 10 cents. The look on Ruth’s face after I actually fixed some- thing: priceless.
I realise many people live like this all the time, by necessity, not by choice, and I anticipate letters saying, “Boo hoo! You had to give up your decaf Frappuccino.” But this wasn’t an exercise in “playing poor.” Our month of no spending was a financial wake-up call, a chance to recalibrate our relationship with money at a time when everyone I know has money on the brain.
Do we really need all the things we buy? Does acquiring stuff have actual value in our lives? Can’t we be just as happy – or perhaps even happier–living on much less?
Our adventure kicked off with a rousing start. After that first day, I wrote in my journal: “Feeling supercharged. We already have so much. What could we possibly need to spend money on?
“By 9 am, Ruth had already made compote from old strawberries and picked flowers I didn’t even know we had in the garden. I cleaned the car by hand for the first time in years, then found a mother lode of black beans in the back of the cupboard. Woo! Oh, and I read and returned the neighbour’s newspaper before he woke up. Total spent today: $0. This is going to be fun, fun, fun!”
Then came Day Two. A rich person once told me money is important only if you don’t have any. I suddenly understood that when it was my turn to entertain Sebastian. Normally, we stop at the comic book shop and the frozen yoghurt place and maybe the bookstore, spending all the way. Now we weren’t allowed to even feed the parking meter. Sebastian was starting to lose it, but then inspiration struck.
“Hey, Bubba,” I said. “Do you wanna ride in a silver carriage and see cool stuff and eat junk food?”
“Yaaay!” he screamed.
OK, so getting pushed around in a shopping cart isn’t exactly a theme park ride, but Costco does have cool stuff and something even better–free samples. For an hour, we munched on franks-in-jackets, cheese ravioli, chicken sausages, raspberry fruit twists, cranberry lemonade, and chocolate pudding (nutrition goes out the window when you’re eating any-thing you can get).
What was remarkable was how liberating it felt to be at a cathedral to consumerism like that and not spend a cent. I’m always confused when people rave about how much they “save” at warehouse club stores. In my experience, I can’t get out of Costco or Wal-Mart for under $200. You want to talk savings? Try going in without your wallet.
One of theunexpected benefits of no spending is that it brings you closer to people. There’s a stigma in our culture about discussing money, but the mere mention of our project prompted friends, neighbours, and even strangers to really open up, mostly about how cheap they secretly are.
The advice was great: Use an internet application like Skype for free phone calls. Ask neighbours with and told me, “Go home. Play with Sebastian. Tell Ruth how much you love her and think about ways to help other people.”
What a novel solution. Gratitude. Service. Duh. I felt like an idiot. Fortunately, all those hours away from restaurants and shopping gave me time to do exactly what he said. I immediately pedalled home and invented an outer-space-themed card game to entertain Sebastian (Jupiter and comets were wild in the homemade deck we played with for hours).
Ruth and I, meanwhile, spent our last few days volunteering at the Bread and Roses Café near our house in Venice, California. Since 1989, the café has been serving 150 people in need each morning in a restaurant setting. Ruth passed out plates of pasta and poured coffee, and I assisted the chef at the stove. Between courses, we met folks making do on the barest of resources. “This place means everything to me,” a homeless man told me. “Anytime I get upset about my situation, I think, Things could be a lot worse. At least I’m around people who care. It helps to think that.”
It was probably the best advice that I got all month, and it was free.
In the end,we saved more than $2000 by not spending for a month. When we began, I imagined we would rush out the moment we were done and stock up on groceries after breakfast at our favourite pancake place. Then maybe hit the mall or go to the movies. Instead, we stayed close to home and played outer-space poker, and I wrote out a cheque for Bread and Roses.
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