A cleanse to align
I never recommend people go on spending freezes. Before I created the BL method and began managing our money mindfully, I would get a credit card statement, panic, and commit to not spend the next month. Of course, I would inevitably break that commitment. I’d feel like a failure and shame myself.
When we learned to spend in alignment with our values, our top priority was to pay off our debt. So many expenditures that previously felt like necessities were clearly out of alignment with our goal. It wasn’t paying off the debt that we cared about so much; it was what it would mean when we no longer had debt – we could scale back work, make different choices, and re-examine what truly mattered.
In that sense, we did perform a spending freeze, or a cleanse. We stopped spending on things that didn’t align with our values. Once we paid off our debt, we had space to reassess whether and how those other things fit in to the life we wanted to live. The landscape changed. Expenditures that once felt critical, or even just important, no longer were because it was clear they didn’t match what we valued and they no longer had a home in our spending plan. Their absence made way for more of what did align, but we only discovered that by making room for change.
Here is a nudge to perform a cleanse of expenditures that don’t match what you value most so that you can ensure that you have more of what you do want in your life.
Practically, here’s how you can do this:
Reflect on what you value most. Is it becoming debt-free? Creating more freedom and choice around work? Saving more in an emergency fund? Saving for retirement? Saving for your child’s college? Saving for a special trip? Identify what it is for you.
Look at your spending plan and each spending category specifically. What items are you spending money on that don’t align with your core values?
Calculate the opportunity cost of shifting that spending. Let’s say you care most about creating an emergency savings account. As you look at your categories, you decide that buying clothes, eating out, and traveling are luxuries that, right now, don’t align with funding the savings account. By cleansing those categories, you can save an additional $2,500 per month. Over three months, that’s $7,500.
Decide on the length of the cleanse. If your goal requires a large sum of money, continually evaluate how you’re feeling. You may decide to reach the goal first, but always check back and make sure you are intentionally aligning your spending with what you value most.
Reflect on what the absence of an item feels like. What does it make more room for in your life in a non-financial way?
You don’t need to permanently eliminate things you spend money on. Instead, reframe how you use your resources. Use your resources for what you value most. Be honest with yourself about what that is. Often, we spend our resources mindlessly, habitually, and as emotional responses, which don’t align with our true priorities and values. By eliminating the non-essentials to focus on the essentials, you create space to identify what is truly vital to your wellbeing. We often need that space and reset to reassess. Once we remove something from our life, we can determine how it fits back in, if at all.