Looking to get out of debt? Try a financial challenge. Pick a period of time, a weekend or, say, the last week in the month, and try to go the entire time without spending anything. If you’re successful, you not only save extra money, but you might find that you’ve learned about new ways of living, too.
For example, consider the experiences of Trent, who writes at thesimpledollar.com. He found that his financial challenges forced him to be resourceful in some surprising, new ways. One revelation to come out of the challenge: he could actually learn to cook and enjoy it.
Our challenges that focused on cooking at home for a certain number of days forced both Sarah and I to spend more time in the kitchen, and we quickly learned that cooking at home wasn’t hard or scary and that it actually saved us a lot of money,” Trent writes. “By the end of those challenges, we were cooking some delicious meals for very little money in our kitchen, so our motivations to eat out were drastically reduced. Plus, during the challenge, we spent a lot less money on food, which meant a lot more money in our checking account.
Read more about making thriftiness and hitting savings goals fun and exciting at thesimpledollar.com.