This article is a continuation of one we posted in last week’s newsletter. We’ve made part 1 available directly on our website here in case you missed that.
Last week I wrote about how for the month of June I would be trying to save money by not ordering in or eating out food. I realized that there were a handful of Heavy Herb projects we really wanted to fund that perhaps could obtain funding if instead of waiting for the money to fall out of the sky I did some work to save it and pump it in myself.
Why this method? There’s obviously a lot of different ways to save money, so why did I choose not eating out / ordering in? There’s a handful of reasons but the main one was a simple question I picked up a while ago from one of my artistic heroes, Father Bronques. The question is,
What would gain you the largest amount of benefits for the least amount of effort?
Since discovering this question a couple of months ago I love using it to guide my decision making. For this specific project I thought, “What could potentially gain me the most amount of money for the least amount of effort?” and it seemed pretty clear to me that a great start would be not eating out.
This choice resonated with me because on paper it’s a zero effort challenge. All you need to do is not eat out. You don’t need to improve your diet or spend any extra time doing anything, except for maybe grocery shopping, which I already have to do.
Additionally, I think that the idea of going out to a restaurant or ordering food to your house is an interesting example of something that as a society we accept to be normal and don’t often spend time questioning. However, when you think about it I think there’s a lot of room to critique these industries or at the very least our relationship to them. I have a couple of weeks left of this series so I’m really hoping to unpack some of those critiques in one of my follow-up articles. For this one I really wanted to focus on my experience at the beginning of the challenge and what takeaways I’ve managed to walk away with so far.
With that said, how’s it going? At my time of writing this, I’m on day 8 of my foreseeable 30 day challenge.
I reviewed my finances from April and May this year, and based on my calculations I’ve estimated that on average I spend roughly $508.16 per month eating out and $767.41 per month on groceries. I hypothesized that by eating out less my grocery bill is going to go up so I’m tracking these costs together. I feel like the savings from not eating out won’t be worth it if I end up spending it all on groceries.
This means that for every day in June I don’t order in, eat out, or grocery shop I should save around $42.52. I have these savings tracked in a spreadsheet, and everytime I go grocery shopping I’ve been subtracting the cost from the savings.
As of Day 8, I’ve saved $114.18 after deducting what I spent on groceries.
Historically I’ve really struggled with committing to these types of cutbacks in my lifestyle, so I’ve been most shocked by how easy the challenge has been. I believe that a lot of the success has to do with the fact that I told everyone reading the newsletter I was going to do this. I don’t know why but when I do things for myself I find it easier to fail. I don’t mind letting myself down. I’ve done it a lot of times in the past. Letting down others, on the other hand, is more difficult for me.
Just the other day I was at a wedding, where I ran into a friend I hadn’t spoken with in several years. He invited me out to one of my favourite local restaurants. I had to tell him, “I would absolutely love to come but I have this newsletter I’m doing a challenge for . . . “ and as soon I mentioned it he let me off the hook for the invite immediately, no further questions asked, except for some that came up about the newsletter.
It’s made me realize that leaning into my community for accountability is something I need to try to do more and more of. Most readers won’t have been around for this article but even a couple of months ago I started working with Jinxz to keep me more accountable to weekly schedule improvements and that’s going way better than when I was doing it all by myself.
I’m exceptionally pleased with how the challenge has been going so far and am eager to write more about how it develops. In addition to not eating out, I’ve been tracking which items I’ve purchased on my grocery shops, how much they cost and how long they last. With eating out costs factored out of my finances it’s a lot easier to zone in on what I’m purchasing in my grocery shops and see if there’s more ways I can save money and hopefully to use this experience to further uplift the Heavy Herb community in the long term.
Written by CSP and originally published in the June 9, 2024 edition of the Heavy Herb Weekly Newsletter
