No Spend Challenge Journal: Week 3

This is Week 3 of our No Spend February Journey. To start at the beginning or jump ahead, click here for Week 1, Week 2 and the final Week 4.

Weekly Recap
This week was a lesson in how to deal with frugality in a celebratory situation. The compulsion to spend cash as a way to express love during the holidays and the guilt associated with each dollar spent, or not spent, really forced me to evaluate my relationship with love and money. 

Day 15: My husband received a packaged. He found a $50 Amazon gift card and spend $25 on Stratego, thinking that it would be a fun game we could play at home. I would have preferred for him to just bring out one of the many board games we already have and save the GC to spend on essentials but his heart was in the right place.

I put up net fencing around my garden with materials we already had from last season so that I could keep our corgi out of the grow area as she has a habit of digging and pulling up plants. I'm very motivated to grow a high yield garden this year that can really reduce our produce bill and increase our health. While working on the garden, I realized that we were not being very good stewards of our home and money before this challenge. It takes a lot of work to make a beautiful and productive home and instead of making our home a lovely place, we were out in the world spending money to escape from the responsibilities that come with a good life. 

Day 16: I woke up from a nightmare that I was recklessly spending money. I was out with friends, eating and shopping. In my dream, I knew I didn't want to spend the money, that I was supposed to be on ‪#‎nospendfebruary‬ challenge, but I couldn't stop myself. But actually, in the dream, I was spending money the way I did in January. When I woke up, I was so relieved the money wasn't gone! I think the challenge is really getting to me. My husband and I have been working on his resume so he can apply for his MBA and hopefully get a waiver on the GMAT/GRE requirements and we found out they approved the waiver! That's $250 saved!

I also called Disney guest services because we've avoided Disneyland due to the measles outbreak which means we lost a month of use from our annual pass. After talking to 4 different people, they extended expiration by a month. That's a $90 value (the cost of the passes prorated by month). I'm so happy about this because, this year, we're not renewing our passes since my husband will hopefully be enrolled in an MBA program by the time September rolls around and we won't have time to go as a family anymore. Instead, my goal will be to find free family friendly activities.

Day 17: This post will finally catch me up to current day! I have had an extremely emotionally charged day for the first time in ‪#‎nospendfebruary‬. Through most of this challenge, I have felt empowered and optimistic. Like I am gaining control of my finances and living a better life. Today, because I couldn't buy things I usually would, I felt poor and disappointed. That's so crazy to me because I know we have the money and could spend it and are choosing not to for bigger goals but I refused to spend on principal and felt like I was violating my personal values.

I think I need a little guidance here from No Spending Veterans. It's long winded (as I'm sure you know I am at this point) so thank you in advance to anyone willing to read through this personal dilemma. This Thursday is Chinese New Year. Imagine doing this challenge during Christmas and it's kind of like that. Before Chinese New Year, my mom and I head to Little Saigon and buy fruit, flowers, cakes, candy and ceremonial things for the Buddhist altar. We buy food for the big family party and enjoy the festival atmosphere since it's so packed and resembles the Vietnam my mom remembers from before coming to America. I usually try to pay for as much as she'll let me. My parents are very well off so she doesn't need me to pay for anything, I do it out of filial duty. Culturally, we believe that once our parents are done taking care of us, it's our turn to take care of them. Financially, I don't believe my parents will ever need me to take care of them in the future due to their substantial estate. So when we go out to eat or whatnot, I try and pick up the bill out of respect. My parents don't always let me but I know they are proud when I do it. I have actually been avoiding going out to dinner with my family during the challenge because I didn't want to not pick up the bill. My mom knows I'm doing the challenge and has said that she would pay but I just don't feel comfortable with that. Why should I enjoy the benefits of dining out from mooching off other people? So I have declined. I figured for Chinese New Year this year I would only modestly decorate my home. Use lanterns I already had. Put oranges from my CSA box on the altar. Buy small cakes instead of the big ones. Skip the fancy flowers I usually buy. You know, try a frugal holiday. And I would just not go to the market with my mom because I was busy with work anyway. Well, my mom needed me to go today and I ended up with the morning off from work so I went with her. I did have some pocket cash so I bought her her favorite iced coffee and a drink for myself while we were shopping ($4) and pitched in for flowers so she wouldn't have to break a large bill ($3). She tried to stop me (reminding me about the challenge) but I just felt like such a crappy person not paying for things I would normally buy for her. My mom wanted to have lunch and I couldn't say no since we were already out and she was hungry, so she paid for lunch too. I felt so restrained. So bad about myself. I just kind of felt like instead of focusing on saving money, I should put all my effort into becoming as wealthy as possible so I wouldn't have to worry about money. But I know fundamentally, that doesn't make sense. My parents came here with nothing and amassed a fortune by being smart, hardworking and frugal. I guess my take away here is that I should have budgeted better for Chinese New Year and put the money in the budget to spend on my parents since it's important to me.

 

Day 18: This was Chinese New Year's Eve and I helped my mom clean her house in preparation. I think I tried harder to help her with manual labor this year over past years because I wasn't able to spend money to help her in other ways for CNY. It's surprising the number of things I used to throw money at to fix. We went to a member appreciation dinner with my husband's Rod & Gun Club, which was basically a free lasagna dinner. Now, my husband and I used to dine out very often and would always have alcoholic beverages with our meal so my husband's first thought was "What are we going to do about wine?" He wanted to bring a bottle but then we'd have to pay corkage. He was literally stumped until I reminded him that we could just drink water with our dinner. He was disappointed but accepted it. It's funny the things we used to feel were just expected expenditures. ‪#‎nospendfebruary‬ lessons.

Day 19: Chinese New Year!! We're celebrating with extended family on Saturday but my husband took the day off work, I took a half day yesterday so we went with my son and mom to a Buddhist temple for New Year's festivities. We pulled out some loose cash we had laying around the house to donate to the temple and to buy somethings for my mom, which seemed like the right thing to do after my Day 17 realizations. Spent $29 guilt free and had a lovely time. We also spend the day eating only vegetarian food in honor of the holiday which is so inexpensive! I think we're going to start integrating Meatless Mondays into our weekly routine.

Day 20: We were supposed to go to Disneyland since we haven't been in a while and we're annual pass holders (it's almost a waste not to go) and they do a Disney Chinese New Year event in one of the lands. My husband decided he didn't want to go to Disneyland if we couldn't spend money and eat the food there. Literally, Disneyland is no fun to him without being able to have some drinks and eat some Disney food. I really love going to Disneyland and even have a blog post written about how to go to Disneyland without spending any money other than one's ticket (http://funsprungfamily.blogspot.com/…/save-money-at-disneyl…) and was really disappointed at my husband's attitude towards this. We stayed home instead. frown emoticon

Day 21: We celebrated Chinese New Year with my extended family. In previous years, we would have given away $500+ in red envelopes, carefully deciding how much each person should get based on where they were in their life. Less for younger kids, more for college kids, etc. I would always have a ballpark of how much we wanted to give and then end up surpassing that amount out of the need to give enough to show off our wealth. This year, I realized I don't care. If I have one big take away from ‪#‎nospendfebruary‬ it is this: My worth is not measured by the money I spend. We gave $20 to each kid and you know what? Everyone enjoyed the new year just as much as when we gave more than $20 to each kid.