With customer spending increasing throughout the years, saving money has become easier said than done. However, writer Jen Glantz, as pictured above, has found a way to cut back spending every month and save over $300 every month, which she states has “added up”. Here is her story:
According to Glantz, her New Years resolution for 2021 was to not only set a budget but stick with the budget. She admits that while she is good at creating budgets, she was never able to stick with them. From inspiration and advice from her friend, however, she has managed to stick with the budget and tells us how:
“A friend told me she was able to curb her spending by banning herself from spending any money on Mondays. Therefore, I decided to implement a similar rule in my life”, says Glantz. “For one whole month, I decided not to spend a dollar on Tuesdays or Thursdays. I stuck to this throughout the entire month of January and what I noticed was that I was not only able to stick with my budget, but I was also able to save over $300.”
To resist the temptation to spend money on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she says that she put a recurring event on her calendar for those days which stated, “No money can be spent today”. This reminder, Glantz states, “allowed me to wake up and start the day off with a strong mindset not to give into any temptation that floated my way”. As a result, she felt more calm and was able to avoid shopping online or ordering take out that day. However, should Glantz had broken that rule, she admits to having a back up plan: “I hid my wallet for the day and blocked my top e-commerce sites using a website blocker so that I couldn’t break the promise to myself”.
Another incentive for her to begin this budget was to help her stay on track with her spending and her life in general. To be more self concious of herself, Glantz explains: “I forced myself to log my spending every day so that I could hold myself accountable and visualize how much I was spending. It was a great feeling being able to log $0 spent twice a week. This added up to eight days a month where I was able to avoid spending any cash”. It had also boosted her self confidence at being able to keep budgets and she was very pleased with herself.
Glantz discusses the long term benefits of her budget as well: “One big fear I had going into this challenge was that if I wasn’t spending cash Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’d find ways to overspend the rest of the week. The results, however, were quite the opposite”, she explains. “After two days a week spending no money, I had lost the urge to spend more than I needed to on other days. I loved this mental game of limiting my spending not only on those days but on other days. So while I did carry my wallet around on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and weekend, I felt less tempted to buy things I’d usually be so carefree about, like a midday snack or a beauty product at a convenience store I was walking by”.
According to Glantz, her daily spending decreased from $53 per day to around $40 per day. While she only planned to keep this budget through the month of January, she has continued to practice this through February and, likely, through March. “It’s become quite an easy rule to follow, especially because I keep that alert on my calendar to remind myself when I wake up on a Tuesday or Thursday that those days are no spending days”, explains Glantz. “Will I continue to do this? Most probably. I will let myself make exceptions for celebrations or when I’m in a time pinch and need to order take out. But I do plan to have at least two no spending days that I implement every week so I can stick with my budget and meet my 2021 financial goals. I first began this program to keep a budget, now I do it for the future!”
