spending hiatus

image from jengold48

"the less you have, the more you enjoy."
carine roitfeld

march 2010 the last five years have left me with a bit of a spending hangover, so i have decided to do a spending hiatus. i am, of course, missing the boat on everyone else's february through march spending hiatuses, but whatever. i'm just going to do a month to "reset" my spending habits. my credit card statement this month wasn't actually that painful, but the fact that i was afraid to open it for a few days still suggests that maybe a break from indiscriminate spending would be wise. plus, i just have so much stuff already that it would be a good idea to spend more time enjoying what i have than simply accumulating more things.

perhaps what i should really say is that i'm doing a baby spending hiatus--less time and fewer restrictions. my goal is simply to stop buying useless stuff and duplicates of things i already have. eating out is still okay, as is going to shows. spending on experiences is not the drain on my expenses, and i think it's okay to eat out a few times a week and go see a band or speaker every so often. also, i'm not going to force myself to eat everything in my (tiny) pantry and freezer before i can buy more groceries. if i can stay out of target, bookstores, and craft stores for a month, i will consider the spending hiatus a success.

most of my spending takes place over the weekend, so i'm going to measure my spending hiatus in weekends instead of weeks. i still can't spend on things that are not completely essential to my life during the week, but the toughest times will definitely be saturday and sunday, so i will focus on those. this weekend is weekend #1. so far so good--i bought brunch for E and i, but that's it. since it's already 5:12, i think i'm going to make it through the day without shopping. i have to go in to school to get a lot of work done tomorrow, so that should make sunday easy, too, but i often bribe myself with shopping when i work on the weekend (as in 'if i work for 2 hours, i can go to kohl's'). next weekend will be even more of a challenge: we have friday off. three day weekends usually mean much shopping. i think i will instead spend the time on crafts, etsy, books, and springtime in ATX.