Comments on: The 7-day Challenge

By: John Williams

John Williams — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:14:42 +0000

carrying around large wads of very dirty Nigerian bills

settling the bill the stack of money can be easily a foot high

Sounds like a party.

By: CW

CW — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:00:51 +0000

The author, Steve and I seem to have a similar financial outlook (response #3) — I use my American Express whenever possible to get the miles. We have never carried a balance on any card and we’re quite disciplined financially in regards to our spending. We’ve taught our children that there’s nothing evil about credit cards, but they are a convenience and not a license to buy things that you don’t have money for. But our recent move to Nigeria has forced us to adapt to a cash mentality and it’s been quite a difficult adjustment. Whenever we go into the country we have to look at how long before we return to the States and make a guess as to how much money we will need in that time span. So it’s kind of like Steve’s experiment, only over a period of, at times, months. We bring in $100 bills because that’s what the black market money traders prefer and how you get the best exchange rate. We can’t use credit or debit cards there at all because of fraud threats. And it’s a challenge when you go out to eat or go shopping to estimate beforehand how much money you’ll need. You don’t want to be loaded down with too much cash because there’s always the threat of robbery and you don’t want to call attention to yourself. But most of the time we end up carrying around large wads of very dirty Nigerian bills (their largest bill is worth $7). Eating out is expensive and when you’re with a large group settling the bill the stack of money can be easily a foot high. But when we’re estimating our money requirements, we usually end up violating Steve’s rule #2 and bringing in a lot more than we think we’ll need, just because we don’t want to get caught short of money. We’ve found when we’re just spending cash, it’s much more difficult to track where the money goes. I like having the credit card bill to see how much I’m spending on groceries and eating out and everything.

By: Kim Siever

Kim Siever — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:53:32 +0000

We don’t track our daily cash flow, but we do track it weekly. We have a budget set out that is broken down into monthly and weekly allotments. Every two months we review our spending and adjust where necessary (increase or decrease if required). We’ve been doing this since January and it seems to be working well so far.

By: StillConfused

StillConfused — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:16:32 +0000

I have teenagers; therefore I have no cash.

It is interesting how frugality came to me “naturally” and I have never had problems in this area, even when my food budget was $1 for a week (Top Ramen — arghh). My sister, on the other hand, has struggled with financial problems her whole life. I wonder why that is?

By: Mathew

Mathew — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:14:39 +0000

Dan,

Good luck with your efforts.

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:45:35 +0000

Kristine is precisely right. My thirst for filthy lucre knows no bounds. But I have it on good authority that T&S has nearly blown its 501(c)(3) status a half a dozen times because of Matt Evans alone.

By: Kristine

Kristine — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:37:09 +0000

#10–of course he is! Surely you’ve noticed that this is bycommonconsent.COM, as opposed to, say, our non-profit would-be competitors at timesandseasons.ORG

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:10:51 +0000

Steve,

#3,

What I was meaning by my comment was that our situation being what it is, we’ve made that commitment. I actually agree with Seth and you on how useful credit cards are. Once ours are paid down, that is our plan, to use them monthly, pay them off, and accrue the great credit rating. We just happen to be in a situation right now that’s tougher than we would like.

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:10:19 +0000

Geoff, Melanie, and you other cash-haters — yeah, this experiment is definitely not tailored to those that belong to today’s cashless society. That said, you can adapt it fairly easily, by simply keeping a ledger for a week and deducting from a set max. The problem is one of restraint — when you do this experiment with actual cash, when it’s gone, it’s gone. If you did it with plastic I doubt the effect of hitting zero would be as dramatic, unless you had some other safeguard in play (spouse takes away cards, etc.).

By: Melanie

Melanie — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:31:40 +0000

I can’t conceptualize using cash– I never carry it. I am definitely part of a generation that has come of age almost completely reliant on using debit cards and online bill pay and banking. Would be interesting to try.

I have found I can curb lunchtime spending by taking those kinds of purchases out of my food budget– when I think to equate a sandwich with the number of meals I can get out of some milk and a box of cheerios (I live alone- that can go a long ways), I tend to skip going out.