Sometimes change occurs so slowly you barely notice it’s happening. Other times one can point at a defining moment where things seemed instantly different. I felt a defining moment in how my wife and I look at money, and what we spend it on, happen as we discussed ordering pizza over the weekend.
To Pizza Or Not To Pizza
It was dinnertime, but neither of us were particularly hungry. Still, a commercial earlier in the day had my wife in the mood for a certain kind of pizza. I was on my way to my laptop to place an order for delivery when she made a noise that suggested she was reconsidering. I paused, turned around, and made my best, “Well, what do you want me to do?” face.
“I’m kind of in the mood for pizza, but I’m not that hungry and I kind of don’t want to spend our money on that. Don’t you agree?”
I threw her my undecided look.
“I’m getting my hair done this week, and we’re having friends over for dinner this weekend. I’d rather save as much of our spending money as possible for that. Besides we have plenty of food here.”
I agreed. We went on to decide an alternative for dinner.
Analysis
Let’s unpack what happened here.
For years we would have simply ordered the pizza without regard to the amount of descretionary funds we had left or additional plans we had for the remainder of the budget period. We each would have had a piece or two. I might have had a little for lunch the next day, leaving the rest to get hard and crusty until I finally threw it away on garbage day. This would have left us with less discretionary funds for the following weekend. If we repeated this same wasteful spending once or twice more during the week, we might have to alter our weekend plans.
Present day, we talk about finances almost every day. We reconcile our checking account and talk about what planned spending we have coming up. This helps us keep our spending in check, preventing wasteful and unnecessary spending.
In summary, we are now more mindful with our spending.
This conversation struck a chord with me because it was so different than what has been the norm for a long time. It feels good to communicate constantly and be on the same page financially with my wife. It feels good to be mindful with our spending. It feels great to be working as a team.
How about you, EOD Nation, what’s a recent example of mindful spending and your significant other decided together?
I know this feeling!
I recently went back over my yearly spending for the past 2 years and I was surprised to see how much I had reduced it by. But what really shocked me what how much I couldn’t attribute a good chunk of the savings to anything significant – it was just all these small things I barely noticed, like pizzas, where my money was slipping away to.
Good work on changing your spending habits and thanks for the interesting read!