“The Game”

Now that we have the trial month as the framework, we get to the fun part. Use your trial month to build what would a typical month might look like and try to be overly conservative. Add in some items like buying new winter clothes, what your monthly car insurance payment would come out to be (even if you pay every 6 months, so the “oof” is not as bad when payment is due), etc. Try to be thoughtful about it but do not kill yourself, there are inevitably going to be some things you will not see coming. Once those expected expenses are added and you have a general sense of what your expense categories should look like (all built on top of your real-world basis) give yourself a pat on the back, you have your monthly “budget”! HA. Tricked you, I guess we built a budget after all. Now we get to play a game.

I am a big proponent of alter-egos. I know, not the segway you were expecting…but stay with me here. When I was in college I had a friend, let’s call him “Joe”. Joe was a great guy - funny, smart and genuinely caring and considerate. Joe was also a lot of fun when he would go out drinking…until his 7th or 8th beer. Then Joe would flip to his alter-ego “Tank” (don’t ask on the name…) Tank was not a lot of fun. Tank tried to fight people at parties, was constantly spilling drinks and a complete and utter liability to everyone around him. The next day, everyone would want to be mad at Joe but we knew the real culprit was Tank. Because of this alter-ego, people were able to separate Tank from Joe and they were judged separately. Somehow, this let Joe get away largely unscathed with his reputation intact despite his (Tank’s) antics.

Now, after that wild tangent, we can get to the point I was trying to make. I play a game every month to try and be as frugal as possible to keep my expenses lower than expected. In order to do this, I take on my own alter-ego, who I have coined “Penny Pincher Patty” (buh dum, pun!) Since my middle name is Patrick, this works well. Anyways, when I go out with friends sometimes I will eat before and just get a few drinks out, since dinners tend to be overpriced. My friends would poke and prod and ask me why I am being so cheap and I would respond “sorry - Penny Pincher Patty (PPP) is out in full force this weekend”. The teasing would still ensue but over time they got used to it, even expected it. It turned into something that was less about me being a cheapskate but instead just an alter-ego that would NOT ALLOW me to overspend. If I was being PPP my friends would just laugh and it became an entertaining scene to see how much I was going to try and save that evening. Over time, when they were trying to save money, my friends adopted alter-egos of their own that they would use. This might sound like we are all certifiable psychopaths but it has worked - allowing us to separate our frugal selves from our personalities of wanting to be generous spenders.

Moral of the story: don’t adopt an alter-ego from American Psycho…but maybe try and put yourself in a different mindset that says it is ok to be frugal, that it is actually encouraged. Do not feel bad about yourself for doing so but instead celebrate it. Heck, if PPP ends up saving me $200 that I might have spent over the course of a weekend I am doing air-pumps I am so over-the-moon. It pays to be a penny-pincher.