No Spending Month - Make It Work For You
My conversation with Jenny about her family’s adoption of a
No Spending Month each year continued, after I recovered from her son’s “gotta
have it now” insight I wrote about last week.
Jenny related that her family learns something new each
year:
- First
of all she finds that she has so much more time because she’s not running
around picking things up at the store. She can turn off that siren call to
buy, because she isn’t buying this month.
- Second,
she finds that they are connecting more with their friends. They find
themselves inviting friends over for dinner more often, instead of filling
that socializing need with trips out to events.
- As her
children have gotten older, their family conversations have grown more
interesting also. This is a purposeful month, so conversations happen and
the topics range from what it means to be happy, to more check-ins on
every day happenings.
- They
find themselves exploring the cities for what they can do for free,
marveling each year at what they find, and then they do them together as a
family.
But most importantly Jenny relates that as parents, they are
modeling and reaping the rewards of teaching their children the importance of
saying No to themselves. They are finding that the benefits of this lesson
reach far beyond the No Shopping Month.
