A No-Spending High

I’ve not yet talked a lot about my financial journey on here yet, but one of the key topics I plan to talk more about on Mostly Minimal Life is about personal finance.  I plan to share the “financial independence” journey I’ve been on since I got out of college, since before I ever knew it had a name.   That’s the idea of the Money Matters section on here.

More on that soon, but for now I just want to share a quicker thought.  I’ve been having a lot of personal finance and financial independence discussions with a colleague/friend at work lately, and it’s really helped to energize and challenge me.  We agreed to do an October expense “peer review,” which basically meant we each logged all of our monthly expenses in detail, and then reviewed and discussed with each other at the end of the night.  This friend is much more disciplined than I am in terms of controlling expenses and living minimally, so I knew I needed to step up my game for the month.

There were two things about this process that really helped me:

1. Tracking things in detail. The idea of writing every single thing down as I spend it made me that much more conscious of everything that I was spending money on.  I wasn’t downloading a sheet at the end of the month from Mint, and then after the fact wishing I had done things differently.  Every day I knew what I had spent so far in the month, and every day I could make a new decision on how to spend my money.  I don’t plan to do this daily approach forever, but it’s a good exercise for a few months to get some of your habits in check and create some better habits.  For example, I’ve been pretty good about eating at home more and eating out less.

2. Talking to someone else about it / Peer Accountability – The accountability of knowing I have to show my list of expenses to someone else really works, for me at least. I’m a pretty transparent person, so I don’t mind sharing it with someone else I trust.  And I’m also a little competitive and I like a good challenge.  That drives me to want to do good when I am getting “reviewed” at the end of the month.  It also helps that the person reviewing it is super disciplined about their spending, and so I knew I had to do good to impress them.

So how did I do?  My peer accountability/reviewer was quite impressed with my October 2019 spending level.  They were actually so impressed that they kept questioning if everything was included, and it indeed was!  We’ll see if I can keep this level of spending up on a sustained basis, but this exercise and approach definitely helped, and I am going to continue doing it for a few months.  And I am going to use that data to set some 2020 budget targets across some key categories like groceries, eating out, clothing, entertainment, kids activities, etc.

Let me now get to the “high” part.

As I am sure you can imagine, there is research that shows that shopping or even just thinking about shopping creates dopamine, which is one of the chemicals in your brain that makes you feel happy.  I would argue that’s a short-term hit of dopamine, especially if you can’t really afford that thing you just spent money on.

I noticed throughout the month that I actually was starting to feel a bit of a “high” from not spending money.  I’d go a few days without spending anything, and I would feel really good, and I would want more of that feeling.  I was getting a dopamine high every time I would come up with an idea of stuff to do with the kids that didn’t involve any money at all.  We’d go for a hike or we’d go to a museum that we already had an annual pass to.  It’s now half-way through November and I’m still running on that high.  I think I actually reversed the model of what creates dopamine in my brain.  I notice similar feelings when I am getting rid of things and creating a more minimal experience in my home.

My challenge to you is –> Find a friend/accountability partner, do some detailed tracking of where your money is going, and set some goals you want to hit.  And remind yourself why you’re doing this, as that’s always important.  Hopefully you will experience a similar “high” from spending less and saving more for your future goals.

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