So I noticed that over the past two months, I had been spending quite a bit of money on certain things—namely more e-books—I am an avid reader, and have the tendency to buy books before I finish reading ones that I already own. For example—after my first staff position was terminated I decided I was going to focus on personal and professional development and started buying numerous books. I think by the time I managed to get my second staff position the number of books bought were up to about seventy books. Fast-forward a little over two years and that list has ballooned to almost three hundred and fifty books, I’ve read about forty-five of them and consider another ten to be “reference” on a topic—that means I have probably another 280 books on the list to read. I also have bought numerous other books as well—so yeah, I shouldn’t be getting anymore books for a while (at least in terms of personal/professional development).

I also had been buying extra lives on a silly match-three game during the past couple of months. So the two combined to more money spent than I really meant to spend.

Therefore I’m declaring March to a minimum-spending month. What do I mean by that? Well, other than books that have already been pre-ordered (and there are only about six or seven of them), taking my dog to the vet, a possible physical order from amazon, and possibly meeting up with a friend for lunch—I’m not going to be spending any money.

I’m going to turn my focus to the things that I already own—the large number of books (both fiction and non-fiction), which I should be reading. I’m going to attempt to have a book review or two done monthly (though with some of the non-fiction books, it could wind up being some type of monthly challenge). I’m also going to focus on working through the various electronic e-courses that I’ve bought (hopefully remembering to take good enough notes for possible blog posts).

I also will just take a deep breath and not worry how long it takes me to get through various levels on the match-3 game in the morning or at night.

The goal is to only have spent money possibly a dozen times this month (not counting bills being paid); if it works well it will continue through the rest of the year (with various changes to what I’m possibly spending money on).