When you get down to brass tacks, it can be really easy to keep things frugal. I never realized it until about a week ago when I decided that I wanted to try and see how I would fare spending as little money as possible. At the end of my little one week experiment, I was nearly blown out of the water when I looked at my checking account and saw how much money that I didn't spend. You see, the thing is that I very rarely carry cash along with me, because it ends up feeling like an inconvenience. I don't like to use my credit card when I don't have to, but I do use my debit card from my checking account for nearly every purchase that I make. I found that rather than thinking of having cash in my wallet as an inconvenience, it's better to think of it as a good check for how much I'm really spending throughout the week.

Just say for example...just throwing a random number out there...that you allow yourself one hundred dollars for the week to do everything that you need to do. That means lunches, dinners, groceries, and whatever extras you might come across. If you know that you have a set spending limit, something in your mind takes an extra moment to say "wait up...let's pay attention to how fast this money is leaving the wallet." It really does work! You can train yourself to watch your spending habits by having a semi-constant reminder of how much you're spending. If you rely solely on using your credit card or debit card for all your purchases, the only reminder that you have of what you've actually spent (short of keeping all your receipts) is checking your online bank account maybe once a week, and then being shocked at how much the dollar amount has gone down.

In truth, I really should challenge myself to do this more often, but every so often I get irritated about having cash in my wallet, and I end up using my debit card anyways. I also tend to end up with lots of change in my pocket at the end of each day since I forget that I have it at the time or I don't have quite enough to cover whatever it is, so I just end up using another dollar. It does tend to help out with having a few extra quarters around when it comes to the time to throw a few loads of laundry into the washing machine.

So maybe that's a good challenge that I can send out to all of you. Try my little experiment for yourself and see what happens. I guarantee that you'll have strong results, and you'll probably end up being amazed at your success. The one thing that I will attempt to impress upon you the most if you are willing to test out my idea is that you need to figure out how much money you can survive on throughout the week. Be realistic, but don't be too overreaching in your estimate. The goal is to have just enough money to get by so that you're actively thinking about how much you're really spending. I wish you all every success in this experiment, and I look forward to hearing a lot of success stories a week from now!