Will You Join Me for A February No $pend Challenge?
by
Terrence Shulman
Since February is the shortest month of the year, it’s a great time to do your first month-long no-spend challenge! Are you game?
And with the holidays now firmly behind us, it is a perfect time to turbocharge your savings or debt payoff!
Or if you can only do a two-week, one-week, or weekend-long no-spend challenge, that is still a great place to start! (But I hope you will give a month-long no-spend a try! Better to shoot for the stars and miss then not try at all. :))
Read on and I will explain how to save money fast with a February no-spend challenge!
Tip: Save the image above to Pinterest so that you can easily refer to this article on how to do a February no-spend challenge later!
There are a lot of great benefits to doing a February no-spend challenge. One of the main ones is that it can allow you to pay off debt or save money quickly! Do you have debt from Christmas? Get it paid off by participating in the February no-spend challenge!
Another note: Are you worried about not being able to spend anything for Valentine’s Day? Never fear! You can either set aside the money for Valentine’s Day and count it as an exception, or you can celebrate it once your no-spend challenge ends, say in early March, for example. And just think that way, the roses will cost only about half as much, the restaurants will not be so crowded, and dinner might not cost as much either! Score!
How do I participate in the no-spend challenge?
For this February no-spend challenge, if you are all in, let’s see if you can go all month without spending
money on anything but the necessities. So use food from your cupboards, pantry, fridge, and freezer. Don’t
buy any clothes or toys. Don’t eat at any restaurants or order pizza or takeout. Don’t spend any money on
entertainment. Don’t spend any money that you don’t absolutely have to.
What are the benefits of a no-spend money challenge?
One big benefit of a no-spend challenge, of course, is that doing it can you save a significant amount of money. But an even bigger benefit is that it can also help you to break money habits that you want to give up.
Say, for example, that you have gotten into the habit of buying clothes every week online at Target. Or toys for the kids. Or you’ve gotten into the habit of stopping at the grocery store nearly every day after work for just “one or two things,” and then you inevitably leave the supermarket or big box store with more than you planned. All of that frequent or maybe even nearly constant shopping, even if it’s not a bunch of money at one time, will really bust your budget. But you can change your financial course more quickly than you think if you’ll get serious. And a great way to do that is with a no-spend challenge.
Are you ready to really reset your financial habits? Then do the no-spend money challenge and begin to change your life today!
How much money can I save during the February no-spend challenge?
The amount of money you can save during a no-spend challenge depends on how long you choose to do the no-spend challenge for and how much you normally spend during that time. But let’s imagine that you’ve decided to go all in, and so you’re going to reduce all spending except for monthly bills like rent or mortgage and utilities and cell phone and fuel for your cars and such, as well as maybe some food like fresh produce.
Speaking of Valentine’s Day…
Love Yourself First
And Give The Gift of Good Boundaries
What are personal boundaries? Our personal boundaries have to do with establishing comfortable space- not too much, not too little- between ourselves and other people. Having healthy boundaries means we feel comfortable letting people get close to us because we know we can have control over how much we share with another person. Here are several basic statements of universal truth:
- We all have personal boundaries
- Our boundaries let us know where we end and the other person begins
- Growing up in families where there is substance abuse, violence or severe mental illness can interfere with our ability to develop healthy boundaries
- Developing healthy boundaries is part of the recovery process
- Boundaries that are too rigid makes it hard to get close with other people; it’s hard to relax and have fun with rigid boundries.
- When our boundaries are too soft, we can find it difficult to protect ourselves from situations that are unsafe; it’s easy for others to take advantage of us. unsafe; it’s easy for others to take advantage of us.
- Establishing “firm but flexible” boundaries is a process that’s different for everyone.
There are no rules about what will work for you: the right boundaries are boundaries that feel comfortable and allow you to have a life worth living.
Signs of difficulty maintaining healthy boundaries:
- Feeling like you can’t say no, even when you want to
- Sacrificing your personal values, plans or goals to please others
- Expecting other people to fulfill all your needs.
- Hesitating to speak up or make changes when you’re not treated rainy.
- Feeling used, threatened or mistreated by others
- Having sex or doing other things when you don’t really want to
- Feeling responsible for other people’s feelings Signs your boundaries are getting stronger:
- You act on feelings when you need to You can say NO without experiencing tidal waves of guilt
- You do what YOU want to do instead of other people’s ideas of what you should do
- You no longer feel responsible for making a relationship work or keeping everyone happy
- You don’t take things so personally
- You can disagree with your friend but still keep the friendship
- You realize you’re not responsible for other people’s actions
- You feel comfortable giving as well as receiving
- You don’t feel as angry and resentful towards the important people in your life.
Personal Bill of Rights
- I have the right to ask for what I want.
- I have the right to say no to requests or demands I cannot meet.
- I have the right to express all of my feelings, positive or negative.
- I have the right to change my mind.
- I have the right to make mistakes and not have to be perfect.
- I have the right to follow my own values and standards.
- I have the right to say no to anything when I feel I am not ready, it is unsafe, or it violates my values.
- I have the right to determine my own priorities.
- I have the right not to be responsible for others’ behaviors, actions, feelings, or problems.
- I have the right to expect honesty from others.
- I have the right to be angry at someone I love.
- I have the right to be uniquely myself.
- I have the right to feel scared and say, “I’m afraid.”
- I have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
- I have the right not to give excuses or reasons for my behavior.
- I have the right to make decisions based on my feelings.
- I have the right to my own needs for personal space and time.
- I have the right to be playful and frivolous.
- I have the right to be healthier than those around me.
- I have the right to be in a non-abusive environment.
- I have the right to make friends and be comfortable around people.
- I have the right to change and grow.
- I have the right to have my needs and wants respected by others.
- I have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. 25. I have the right to be happy.
~Author Unknown
Happy New Year Everyone 2023!
Sex, Death, Affairs: Everything People Would Rather Talk About Than Money
The merits of talking candidly about salary are widely acknowledged. Actually doing it is more complicated
By
Emma Goldberg Jan. 13, 2023 New York Times
Here is a small sampling of problems that were not anywhere near the scope of Emma Bushnell’s job description as an executive assistant at a law firm, yet filled her daily conversations thanks to gossipy colleagues. One lawyer’s difficulty finding a contractor for a second home. Another lawyer’s stress over planning a vacation to Colombia. The partners at her white-shoe law firm – whose salaries were at least five times her own – seemed to feel entitled to vent. Yet when she raised her own issues, about financial insecurity, they squirmed.
“They were constantly getting these questionnaires to evaluate me and I was like, ‘Any word you can put in? I’m making $55,000 a year,” said Ms. Bushnell, 33, who left the firm last year. “They would find it gauche or uncomfortable. And I was like, ‘You know what, if you’re uncomfortable it’s because you’re making too much more money than me. And that’s your problem, not mine.”
Ms. Bushnell’s attempts to puncture her colleagues’ silence about salary, including asking other assistants to share theirs, kept getting squelched.
That’s what happened to Mary Lemmer, an entrepreneur who bounced between jobs in Silicon Valley and found some of her requests for raises were met with what she called something like “adult temper tantrums.” Being belittled has made it tougher for her to keep asking for the money she needs, creating a physiological response of flushed skin and a pit in her stomach when she has to negotiate.
“If every time I go for a run I stub my toe or twist my ankle, I’m probably not going to be excited to go for a run again,” Ms. Lemmer said. “To have those conversations go so poorly – that really created a fear.” Like going for a run, or drinking water and getting sleep, the merits of talking candidly about money are widely acknowledged. There are T-shirts emblazoned with “pay the women.” There are Beyoncé lyrics about getting paid (“Gimme my check”). There are wildly popular TikTok accounts devoted to asking strangers on the street to share how much they make.
Money talk is in vogue, theoretically. In practice, however, those who try to make it happen in their real lives – over coffee with colleagues, over brunch with friends, over a friendly exchange on Slack – often find themselves stymied. They face subtle or outright resistance from higher-ups.
But as salary transparency becomes the lawin more states, including New York, California, Colorado and Washington State, where many employers now or will soon have to disclose the compensation or the salary range for a position on any job posting, and with legislators in at least a dozen more states planning to introduce bills this year, some are hoping that the legal shift will accelerate long-awaited social and cultural shifts, too.
Alice Lemmer, Mary’s mother, has watched her daughter wrestle to get raises in recent years, and has looked back regretfully at all the moments in her own career when it didn’t occur to her that she could ask colleagues, especially her male colleagues in software, about their compensation. “I was never told ‘Oh don’t talk about your salary,’ but somehow I knew that wasn’t something you did,” Ms. Lemmer, 65, said. “It was rude. It was intrusive. I don’t know why – when you think about it logically, it shouldn’t be. But that was the hidden message.”
It’s a hidden and often not-so-hidden message, one cemented by broadly accepted rules of etiquette and Americans’ financial anxieties. Middle class people are reticent to discuss money because their class status is precarious, and they are afraid that talking about debt will expose that fragility to their children or neighbors, according to Caitlin Zaloom, an anthropologist and the author of “Indebted.” Ms. Zaloom has found that her research subjects will divulge debts and budgeting worries with her that they haven’t even shared with their children. This secrecy dates back to the 19th century, when Americans came to view a household budget as reflective of a family’s moral worth.
Rachel Sherman, a sociologist who studies affluent and wealthy people, has found that people don’t like to identify as well-off even if they have millions of dollars in family income or inherited wealth, send their children to private schools and own second homes.
Ms. Sherman, the author of the book “Uneasy Street,” once contacted a research subject with an annual household income of over $2 million who refused to label herself as affluent. Ms. Sherman traces this in part to an American upper class that has learned in elite school settings not to talk openly about excess. The 2008 financial crisis also contributed to people’s desires to hide their wealth, along with the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its criticism of the “1 percent”
What all this secrecy does, though, is place a curtain over economic inequality, these researchers said. People don’t talk about money especially not with numbers attached so the scale of disparities is unclear, the chasms between millionaires and upper class and middle class and working class shrouded in ambiguities.
talking about numbers allows us not to talk about inequality,” Ms. Sherman said. “It allows people to move through the world without having to openly acknowledge to themselves or others that they may have a lot more than other people.”
“Not
No other clunky topic rivals the money taboo, not even sex and death. “People tell me about really profound intimate details of their lives – they tell me about all kinds of fantasies, affairs, sexual escapades,” said Matt Lundquist, 46, a psychotherapist in New York City who works with many wealthy clients. “The one thing that has historically persisted as outside what people will open up about, even in the context of long-term therapy, has been mentioning salary.”
The pressures to keep quiet, and the stakes of doing so, are heightened for women of color, who are told in subtle and un-subtle ways that they will face consequences for breaking from social conventions. Kristen Egziabher, 41, for example, who works in financial technology and lives in Texas, recalled that her parents, who had both graduated from historically Black colleges in the 1970s, taught her to avoid asking questions in the workplace that might cause her to stick out. Get noticed for quality of work, they told her, not for stirring up trouble. As a result, Ms. Egziabher rarely talks about salary negotiations with her teammates.
On top of the stigma surrounding money conversations, there’s the constant thrum of expectations to keep up with the Joneses or Kardashians – expectations that people have the newest sneaker brands and are taking weekend trips with friends, all while juggling student loans and the strain of inflation.
Terrence Shulman, a therapist who runs a program for people with financial problems including overspending and compulsive theft, has seen the way shame, guilt and childhood trauma merge to form pernicious habits, such as hiding debt from family members. Mr. Shulman experienced this himself. Growing up, he watched his mother take on debt when his father stopped paying child support. As a teenager, he buckled under the weight of trying to be a good son, and he started rebelling by shoplifting. Mr. Shulman later sought therapeutic treatment for his financial anxieties, and he has now offered it to hundreds of patients.
Even as a person who thinks and talks about financial honesty all day, Mr. Shulman struggles to speak candidly to friends about his salary. Five years ago, a close friend asked him how much he made and he balked.
“He goes ‘Do you mind my asking how much money you make?” Mr. Shulman recalled. “I didn’t know what to say. If he’d asked me ‘How’s it going with your wife?,’ I’d tell him all the details.”
Slowly, though, cracks in the social surface are appearing, which career coaches are eager to wedge open even further.
When graduate students visit one of the career counseling offices at the University of Colorado, Molly Thompson, 44, a counselor for the masters of the environment program, asks them to calculate their “survival number”: the minimum amount of money they need to get by, taking into account rent, food and student loans. They account for inflation by adding 15 percent. Then they calculate 20 percent above that baseline number. That’s the figure they use to anchor their salary negotiations, as they apply for their first jobs out of graduate school.
When Ms. Thompson first started offering salary negotiation workshops, she couldn’t get students to show up. They told her they were too scared and would accept whatever compensation was offered to them.
Colorado’s salary transparency law, which went into effect in 2021 and is similar to New York’s enacted last year has been a boon Although the law requires companies to share a pay range with job candidates not all companies are following it in good faith, Ms. Thompson said. Some employers are posting ranges as large as $25,000 to $200,000.
But at least students aren’t feeling as if their negotiation process means bumping around in the dark, hoping they won’t stub their toes.
Even in states without sweeping salary transparency laws, workers are learning from the model created by these laws and protecting themselves from being lowballed. Keren Gifford, 38, who works in health care analytics in Pennsylvania, said that when her previous employer asked her to share how much she had made in a prior role she refused to answer, sidestepping by saying how much she wanted to make in her next position. The human resources team chided her. She didn’t care.
Other workers are ratcheting up their efforts by calling on friends, relatives and even strangers for information about how much money they should ask for at work. Alexis Kirton, 29, was recently on a date with a white man who worked in her industry – gaming. Aware, as a Black woman, that in many industries, hers included, women of color are often paid the least, she shared her salary to see whether he thought she was making enough. They later called it off, but she still hopes to contact him for advice before her next salary negotiation meeting.
“We didn’t end it on bad enough terms, so I will probably reach out,” she said.
His response last time was instructive, after all: “He told me I should be making so much more.”
Emma Goldberg covers the future of work for the Business section.@emmabgo
MARIE KONDO’S LIFE IS MESSIER NOW — AND SHE’S FINE WITH IT!
by
Jura Koncius
Washington Post
January 26, 2023
Last In the chill of January, we often examine how we are living. And right now, many of us are revisiting the tidying principles of Japanese lifestyle queen Marie Kondo.
But the ever-organized Kondo, it seems, is a bit frazzled since giving birth to her third child in 2021. Like most of us, she’s having trouble keeping up with all of it. Never fear, though: She is still sparking joy. It’s
just that, these days, that doesn’t hinge on having a tidy house. Her new rituals turn inward, to more thoughtful things than a drawer full of perfectly folded T-shirts or an Instagram-worthy spice cabinet.
In her latest book, ‘Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life,” Kondo expands on the Japanese concept of kurashi, or “way of life.” She elaborates on simple ways to bring calmness and happiness to everyday things. Yes, that can mean cleaning out your purse every night, but it can also mean playing classical piano music during breakfast. Or making your mom’s recipe for black vinegar chicken wing stew. (The recipe’s included in the book.)
This book is a bit of a reality check. Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup. “Tidying up means dealing with all the ‘things’ in your life,” Kondo writes in the book. “So, what do you really want to put in order?”
The pandemic gave me time to finally clean out my shameful attic, Here’s what I learned. Kondo says her life underwent a huge change after she had her third child, and external tidying has taken a back seat to the business of life. “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way
for me at this time at this stage of my life,” she said through an interpreter at a recent media webinar and
virtual tea ceremony.
She encourages everyone to create their own rhythm, their own routines, based on what makes them
happy, and she offers more than 125 serene photographic examples to inspire. (Most are not, however,
from her own house.) Her assignment for readers: Come up with a doable joy routine and stick with it for 10
days, then see whether the daily habit changes are making you feel better. Kondo says that, for many, the perfectly organized space is not realistic. “Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” she said at the event. “I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.”
Although her two Netflix series showed her helping people overwhelmed with emotion about their stuff, Kondo now drills down to a more tightly focused approach, helping people identify little activities to bring peace and joy on a deeper level. Among Kondo’s personal joys: buying 100 percent silk or organic cotton pajamas, because they feel good and help her sleep; perusing her tea-leaf drawer and drinking tea three times a day to bring a sense of calm; and opening her childhood sewing box, which brings back warm memories.
Some people save things. Others crave a clean slate. What happens when opposites attract?
Previously, the decluttering diva has seemed to be a bit of a tough cookie when it comes to sharing details of her inner thoughts or how she finds time to relax. But now Kondo writes in her book that, although she loves her work, “sometimes I pack my schedule so tightly I feel frazzled or am overcome with anxiety.” As a tidying professional, she says, she puts pressure on herself to always keep her house in order.
She and her husband, Takumi Kawahara, president of KonMari Media, the company she founded, carefully plan their days to spend time with their children while still getting other tasks done. (Kawahara, by the way, goes to bed at the same time as the kids and gets up at 4 a.m.) She gets through the day by flinging open her windows for some fresh morning air, lighting incense and wiping the soles of her shoes. And, yes, she does thank her shoes for supporting her when she is cleaning them after a day of service.
Kondo holds a cup of tea. (Courtesy of KonMari for Marie Kondo.) Another activity that sparks joy, she says, is scrapbooking. She fills her scrapbook with photos that she has ripped or cut out of books or magazines. The scrapbook is organized by color. (Of course it is.) When she wants to relax, she looks at the pages of green items. There is also a section with cakes and sweets. Kondo says that, when a particular photo no longer brings her joy, she rips it out. She suggests creating your own scrapbook and looking at it before bedtime to relax.
Kondo says people have been asking her about her own lifestyle and personal rituals since her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” published in the United States in 2014. “Tidying our homes, tidying our environment is also a way of tidying our minds,” she says. By organizing our hearts and minds, it becomes clear what we really want, Kondo says, adding that these are the things she is struggling with right now.
Kondo says she realizes that, as her children grow up, her way of life will change again. “I will keep looking inward to make sure I am leading my own kurashi,” she says.
Good luck with that, Marie.
HAVE A SAFE MONTH & NEW YEAR, AND REMEMBER: LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT!