Yay! Guess what time it is?!? It is the week that we all hate to love! Why do we have this love/hate relationship? Well, because it is time for a Penniless Week! Yes, it is a week that we all hate doing…but absolutely LOVE the results and often have raving reviews and excitement from readers all around regarding the success of the week after just a bit of sacrifice.
Don’t forget, that for the next 7 days, we are all going to live like we can’t spend a penny!
We know many of you are joining us this week for a great week of sacrifice, learning and growing as well as growing our savings. Most of our readers have averaged a savings of $300 during this week.
What would you do with $300 extra?
- Use it to pay for Christmas?
- Give your debt pay-off goals a boost and get closer to being debt-free?
- Use it towards an upcoming vacation?
- Make a home improvement?
The possibilities are endless, but you will not have the extra $300 or so unless you make this small sacrifice this week.
To find out all of the details on exactly how Penniless Week Works, you will want to read the official “rules” post on Penniless Week HERE.
And, the better news is that you will not only have some extra money in your pocket, you will gain something even greater this week: building you and your family’s character and a new perspective.
Often, we do not realize how much we are spending when we only see a little bit here, $1 there, .50 over there, etc. This frivolous spending could possibly even equal your money needing to be saved as part of our 52-week savings challenge! Other things that you may learn:
- It is character building for everyone to learn to temporarily sacrifice and to learn to “live without” to reach a goal.
- It is a test run to see if you really can live without and help identify perhaps problems your family has or addictions that are developing, like coffee out, unnecessary snacks, movie theater addiction, etc. We learned something similar when we have done no electronic entertainment weeks! It is quite eye-opening!
- The value of your hard work and sacrifice. Each time we do this, we seem to come out of the week being even wiser with our allotted budget for the rest of the month. It also helps us to value each penny and consider how much meaningless spending actually ends up costing you ($1 here, .50 there, etc.)
- A good chunk of “seed” money to help you reach your financial goals and dreams!
Now we know that this week is probably going to involve some creativity, especially in the kitchen. Well, we are not going to turn you loose on this challenge without helping you by providing tools to make it easier.
The tools that we have used have literally saved us thousands over the past few years that we have been using them. It’s all just about a little bit of pre-planning. These tools can also be found on the official Penniless Week Challenge post. We HIGHLY recommend that you utilize these tools to help make your week easier.
Next steps: (leave comments below so we can all have fun and learn!)
- Live Penniless and leave comments below telling us about your progress.
- Tell all of us the funny meals you eat!
- What did you do for fun and entertainment this week?
- We would also LOVE to know how much you think you saved over previous weeks?
Are you a blogger?
Calling all bloggers! Want to join us in a special way? Well, just post about how you will be participating in this challenge with us and encourage your readers to join you, sharing a link to the posts about the rules and how it works here. Then just link up your post and we will share with our readers and on our social media channels so that we can all help encourage and help as many as possible have extra money for their family’s needs!
This is also part of our 52-Week Take Back Your Finances Challenge as task #41. If you want to see an entire financial make-over in small, painless baby steps, you will want to check this out too by clicking on the 52-Week Take Back Your Finances Challenge and sign up to start receiving your automated challenge from the very beginning!
One final thing…we also have a Facebook Group where you can engage in discussions, receive encouragement and talk to others that are participating in the challenges too for more ideas! Head to the Be Intentional with The Thrifty Couple Facebook Page HERE and ask to join us there! You can also invite friends and spouses too!
