I’ll be leaving my home for the last 10 years, Korea and going to Canada in about a year from now. In preparation for this move, I’ve been officially on money-spending lock-down and am all about the frugal living, even more than I was previously. There is truly nothing scarier to me than arriving in Canada with basically nothing more than what I can fit in 2 suitcases, nowhere to live and also no job connections without at least $50,000 in the bank to tide me through the tough times. I want to avoid eating away at my investments if at all possible when I go back to Canada, so it’s now all about the frugal living for me in this next year.
Back to Frugal Living for me
Anyway, it’s been fun getting back on the frugal living bandwagon and it reminds me of the early years when I was paying off students loans and doing such things as: walking for up to an hour or more instead of paying $1 for the bus, filling up water bottles at random machines pretty much anywhere instead of buying bottled water (in Korea, people don’t usually drink tap-water), eating huge meals whenever they were free, making sure I was in the taxi at 11:59 instead of 12:01 because prices went up $0.20 after midnight, and stalking through the streets for hours on my bicycle trying to hunt down that elusive $4 watermelon, or $3 strawberry flat truck.
The Solution: The Money Diet
Back in the day, one of my friends and I used to have money-diet challenges, where we would try to spend as little as possible in a single month. This of course didn’t include things like rent or normal bills, but it covered all forms of discretionary spending. We would track spending each day and put it up online for the world to see our victories (or failures). My favorite thing about it was the “0’s” next to a day and I would try to rack up successive days of this. It was super motivating trying to beat my friend too (I always did because he has a weakness for eating out! Haha!).
The reason why I like this strategy is that it can be hard to be frugal-extreme for month after month after month. But, for one month? Just about anyone can do it and there is always light at the end of the tunnel. In a normal month, I probably spend around $600 in discretionary spending, so if I can cut that down to something like $200, it’s $400 extra in the bank.
Money Diet Challenge for March: Who Wants to Join?
The money diet is back! I’ll be keeping track of my daily spending in March in my Facebook status update, and I’ll do a weekly post on here. Who wants to join me? We can eat all the food in our cupboards. Get buff from walking everywhere. Pay off some more debt. Save a bit more for our future. Impress all our friends with our thrifty ways.
Leave a comment or send me a message if you want to join. I’d love to have some company. For some inspiration, check out The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey, the king of all things frugal living and paying off debt.
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