The financial squeeze.
Part two in a series on no-buy challenges.
If you missed the first post in this series, you can read it here, but essentially I am decreasing my spending in an effort to increase how comfortable I feel with the balance in my checking account.
Lately, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with my lack of consistent income. I am not afraid of working hard, and I like to contribute financially to our household, but because I am a self-employed virtual assistant, it’s not always easy to make money. Clients come and go, and in this world of oversaturated content and services available online, I fear that I am not always visible or valuable to those who could benefit from my skills. It’s a work in progress, I suppose.
Nevertheless, the increasing frustration I’ve felt of late has led me to the fact that in this season that is a financial squeeze, since I do not have a breadth of clients paying me to assist them with their businesses, the only other option I have is to spend less.
As I pondered the conundrum that I am in — of being willing and ready to work but not having the ability to and therefore having to decrease my spending, I realized that my desire to give myself the challenge in the form of a no-buy is me attempting to exert some form of control over my situation.
It feels good to be in control, and I’ve noticed that when I am earning money, I feel much more powerful than when I’m not. When I’m waiting until Friday for my spouse to get paid and not earning any money myself, I feel as if I am a caged animal. When I’m not earning money, the only way for me to feel like I have any control over my financial world is for the amount of purchases to decrease, for costs to decrease, and for spending to decrease. And since I’ve been been a stay-at-home-parent for over a decade, I’ve spent a lot time feeling constrained and bumping up against financial limitations.
So while I need to decrease my expenses, a part of me rebels against it because instead of decreasing, I want to increase. I want to feel able and capable of getting through this tight season because my skills have value, I am a good worker, and I am being financially rewarded for my efforts, but instead I am having to decrease and say no and deny.
It is what it is. I can’t magic money out of thin air, so I have to find it where I can. I can find more money in spending less. Of course, I can. But do I want to? Do I feel like it? Definitely not.
I’m curious, dear readers. If you have done a no-spend or low-spend challenge, how do you feel it went? What insights did you bring with you into your future financial decisions? During seasons of light cash flow, how have you navigated them? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.