I’m excited to share with you that I’m preparing to go on a spending fast for the month of June!

My overall plan is to purchase only food, gas, and any other absolute necessity. No books — not even a 99-cent download from amazon.com. No yarn — I have enough projects started and yarn in my stash that I could go months (years, at the rate I knit) without buying another skein. No cute little this or that which catches my eye as I browse a favorite shop here in town. Not a single thing that I don’t absolutely have to purchase.

To take this to a finer level, I’m going to eliminate as many as possible of non-necessary purchases within the realm of necessary purchases. For example, I already don’t buy soda or junk food at the grocery store, but when I go out to eat, I order a sweet tea. In June, I’ll drink water with any restaurant meal. I also plan to significantly curtail my driving, cutting back on gas purchases.

I’ve contemplated participating in a spending fast before now, but until now I simply toyed with the idea. Now that I’m fired-up about building my mortgage-free home fund as quickly as possible, the time is right.

In looking over my spending for the past month, I recognize that I probably won’t save that much money, and that’s okay. Any amount I can add to my mortgage-free home fund is great. Additionally, this appeals to my desire to add less “stuff” to my life. Again, even if I buy 5 fewer things than I would have, that’s . . . well, 5 things fewer.

Of course, this takes care of my nagging little desire to buy an Apple i-watch, a nifty device I have absolutely no need for (I don’t even wear a watch!) but for some reason have an itch to own.

I’ll share a weekly update, and I promise to be totally honest. Let me know (via a comment below) if you’d like to join me — it would be fun to do this with someone else!