Who’s Got What It Takes To Live Without?

Of course living on $56 for food, gas, entertainment, and booze for a week is crazy; it’s ridiculous, drastic, and near impossible. That’s the point!

This challenge is supposed to be an exercise in extreme budgeting practice. It’s meant to throw you in an uncomfortable situation and see how (and if) you handle it.

What if $56 is all you had? What if your world changed in a second and you had no other choice but to live off of what little means you had? Could you do it?

We all live our lives just a bit above our means. We take trips with our friends, order extra rounds at the bar, and buy big toys we can’t quite afford yet. Why do we do this? Cause it’s fun! Because day to day we have to get up and go to work and come home and it’s a grind. So, we splurge.

But what if we lived smarter?

What if day to day we lived a little more strategic? What if we shopped smarter, budgeted our spending, cut our costs, said no to a few frivolities and lived a little lighter? Could we find a balance? Would we now be able to afford the life we wanted to live? And would it be sweeter knowing we earned it?

Now let me be clear before everyone gets upset, I’m not saying everyone needs to live on $56 a week, far from it. But imagine if you could. Imagine if you knew you could if you had to and imagine what lessons you would learn from surviving that challenge. Would you think twice the next time you went shopping? Would you keep a closer eye on your monthly spending? Would you start biking more than driving just for the fun of it?

The Challenge

I challenge you to try a micro budget challenge.

Pick a week and decide this will be the week you live off of $56 ($8/day) for all your variable costs. Commit 100% to this challenge and record what happens? Think you can do it? Think you’ll be surprised? I’m a week into my budget challenge and I can definitely say it’s already begun to change my life.

Now who wants to give it a shot?