Introducing: Our No-Spend Year!

The Money Saving Mom, Crystal Paine, inspired me this last year by making it her year of rest. 

I love the idea of having a theme for a year! 

So this upcoming year, 2017, our family has declared this to be a year of not spending extra!

We will buy for necessities but not for wants!

We've done this for a month in the past. It was hard.

I think a year may just kill us.

But...here's the thing: For us this is not only about money!

To give you a bit of a backstory, we recently came home from a two day whirlwind trip to The Henry Ford campus in Dearborn, Michigan.  Our kids loved, LOVED (you should go, like, for realz) touring Greenfield Village and The Henry Ford Museum.  On the way home we were talking as a family about how neat the old generations were. How it would have been so neat to have self-service gas stations and to sit around and listen to radio programs. 

The kids went on to do their own things in the backseat while Nick and I continued talking. We discussed how much we hate that our kids are growing up in this age of entitlement and technology and loss of skills that so many people had in generations before (sewing, baking, basic carpentry skills, anyone?). 

Anyway, as we drove on we kept talking and by the time we pulled into our driveway we had this plan outlined: a year of not buying anything extra. For gifts we would encourage our kids to make homemade gifts. We would entertain ourselves with things we already have (shocker!) or we would instill some good old fashioned hard work to pass the time. 

We will still buy for needs but wants have to go.  No more running out for craft supplies or more Legos or WHATEVER! 

We're hoping this creates an attitude of gratitude that we so desperately want our family to have as part pf our legacy.  We want this to help their creativity blossom.  We actually like it when our kids are bored: It's when they think their best.

The extra money? Well, we have a wee bit o' debt left that by paying that off would make us DEBT FREE!!! So we're really hoping that we can throw all of this extra money at that.  But that's not our reasoning behind this madness. :)

We're hoping that, Lord willing, when we are staring at the back end of 2017 that our kiddos will have a better appreciation for their money, and especially ours, and will think a bit differently about spending and the value attached to their things. That, when they are making out their 2017 Christmas lists, perhaps they will ask for less rather than more toys. 

All that said, I'm inviting you all to join in on our fun...be it for the entire year, a month, or even a week! 

I plan on documenting this all as the year progresses in hopes that by doing so y'all can keep me (us) accountable and on task.

Wish us luck and let me know if you'd like to join in on the fun! 

.