It's FREEZE time again!

Thankfully, this freeze is not referring to temperatures. February marks my first spending freeze of 2011!

For those of you who may not be familiar with this little practice, let me give you some back ground. A long time ago in a life that feels very far away (translation: when I was living in CT and working at Pfizer) a dear friend of mine gave me the book "Women and Money" by Suze Orman. Say what you will about her personality, or her annoying voice, this lady has some great content in her books. I credit reading this book with putting me on track financially and, in an abstract sense, getting me into the work I'm doing today as a financial educator.

One suggestion that came up in the book was to put yourself on a spending freeze, meaning that you don't spend money on anything but the most essential things: bills, food, transportation and the like. I started small, going just one week at a time (some folks may need to start with just one day, depending on their current spending habits). I'm now at the point where I freeze my spending quarterly, for one whole month.

Yes, you read that right. For four months out of the year, I spend money only on household bills (rent, utilities, insurance), groceries (this does NOT include eating out or buying non-food products at the grocery store: it is just basic food supplies), and transportation (in my life, that means gasoline, my car payment, and insurance). Oh, and I still continue to deposit money into my savings accounts as usual, since I'm not really "spending" that. At the end of the month, all the extra money that I would have pissed away on stuff that I really don't need gets rolled over into my savings.

There are several benefits that I've found from this exercise:
1. It is a GREAT way to save a ton of money!
2. It "resets" my spending behavior. For many of us, our knee-jerk solution to many problems is to throw money at it. By taking money out of the picture, I get more creative about ways to solve problems or spend time.
3. It reminds me that I really do have just about everything that I could possibly need, as well as most of the things that I want.
4. If I realize that there is something that I don't have but need/want to acquire before the spending freeze is over, I refer back to #2: get creative. (For example, last year I was longing to have a toaster oven at work because honestly food is so much tastier when it isn't microwaved to death. Instead of buying one, I trolled around on FreeCycle and found one that someone else was giving away!)

I almost feel like I'm cheating, since February is the shortest month of the year. The only exception I may end up making is if Brian and I find the perfect house. But I'll cross that bridge if/when we come to it!