A Year Without Spending: What It Means for Us, and What It Means for You

The phrase “without spending” sounds super scary- and it should. I thought I’d fill you in on what is going to happen with the Muehleisens in the next year, and what it means for everyone.

I’ll try to start from the beginning.

This past summer, Ben and I put a contract in on a house. After inspections, number crunching, and a look at our bank account, we decided that house wasn’t for us. In fact, we decided, for more than one reason, to hold off on house hunting for the remainder of 2011.

Recently, we started talking about starting up the search again. When we took a second look at the bank account, we decided that we needed to change some things. We have money saved up to put a down payment on the house. However, there’s this thing nagging us a little: debt. It’s a nasty four-letter word, and I think both of us are finally really sick of it following us around. We’ve decided to do something about that.

We are lucky enough to make plenty of money. Our budget is set on Ben’s salary, and we always said my salary was the “extra cushion”. Unfortunately, we’ve translated “extra cushion” to mean “the money we can just piss away”. It’s not like we’re going out and spending lots of money on horrible things- we just haven’t been accountable enough to spend it on appropriate things- debt and savings. Instead, we’ve been out to eat with friends, to concerts, and just spending here and there on a bunch of stuff.

I asked our bookkeeper (AKA Ben) to sit down and figure out a few things- how much total debt we have, what our payments look like every month, and what would happen if we poured ALL of our extra money onto our debt. He figured that if we did so, we could pay off the remainder of our credit cards in a year. A YEAR. And that’s just based on HIS salary. Once the cards are paid off, we could roll those extra payments onto our cars, then onto student debt, then onto the duplex. Seriously, if we do this right, we could be pretty much DEBT FREE before we know it.

Hence, a year without spending. More properly put, a year with minimal spending.

Now, getting there is the hard part. We are going to have to change the way we live in some ways to make this happen. We’ve started thinking about the things that will change, and they will influence our life and probably the lives of our friends. Let me tell you how.

What it means for us:

The obvious statement is that means that we spend less. Spending less translates into less trips out to eat, less shopping, living on less in general. I think I’ll sum it up as a really basic, simple year of living. I think we already live pretty simply, but I’m willing to push that boundary even further to see what we can do. I think this will be a really tough year for us, but I’m actually excited about it. We will be spending WAY more time at home, which is actually a good thing. We can work on projects around the house together. We can cook more organic meals with what veggies and fruits we get from our co-op. I am going to try to make our own laundry soap and somehow try to rig some dryer sheets. I’ll have a LOT of time to work on my Etsy shop, and both jobs, and stay organized. We will probably play a lot of cribbage and gin rummy. Dinners out will be very rare- for special occasion only. All of the money that we don’t spend on those things? It gets dumped onto debt.

What it means for you, our friends:

It means we obviously still want to hang out with you, but it probably won’t be having dinner out together. It’ll probably mean having coffee instead. Or inviting you for dinner at our place. Or, you can invite us to yours. I’m a mean cook, and I’ll bring the goodies. You’ll probably see more handmade gifts. Which will probably be way more thoughtful than something we purchase in a rush. So, honestly, not too much changes for you, except maybe the absences of dinners out with us.

So, there it is. Our next year or two, in a nutshell. Big changes over here!

Advertisement