Every January at Postconsumers, we take the idea of a New Year’s resolution seriously and we focus an entire month of content on a resolution our staff has picked for the year. Past years’ topics include going on a media diet, de-cluttering and last year’s topic of learning to separate emotion from “stuff.” This year, there was a tight competition between two topics, but at the end of the day we decided to focus on the ways that you can spend less by learning to let go of society’s addictive consumerism. So this January, we hope to improve both your bottom line and your mental health.

Why Did We Choose This Topic?

As always, we’re trying to find a balance between wanting to encourage individuals to find their own definition of the satisfaction of enough and motivating people to realize the dangers of addictive consumerism and the grasp that it has on most people in the U.S. For many people, realizing the stress and emotional toll that our culture’s addictive consumerism is having on them is a journey that they need to already be traveling before the realities of the heaviness of our national disease hit them. The starting point of that journey often has to be a more tangible goal with more immediate need than the beauty of the satisfaction of enough. We don’t know many people who aren’t actively trying to tighten their budgets a bit and do a better job at saving money and spending less. The benefit of separating yourself from addictive consumerism is that you’ll have a much easier time controlling your money! So we felt that this topic actually helps people with a resolution they know that they have – better budget control – and a resolution they may not realize that they have – better mental health!

The Budget Aspect: Why It’s a Great Resolution

We love the idea of tying this year’s resolution and goal into budget control because it’s a skill that so many people haven’t had a chance to focus on or learn in their lives. For many people in the current generation, their first foray into adult life came already saddled with gigantic student debt, they were influenced by the all-time consumer generation of the Baby Boomers, and the explosion of easy credit made it equally easy to never have to learn to live within their means. We’re not saying that this applies to every person, but we know that there’s still a very real credit and debt crisis in America, and budgeting and saving is still a skill set that people aspire to master. We hope to help them do that by using a fairly specific context for getting your budget under control.

The “Stuff” Aspect: Why It’s a Great Resolution

Somewhat obviously, if there’s one thing that we believe in with a passion here, it’s that’s learning to let go of “stuff” as a mental or emotional driver and identifying where your level of enough exists is a key to happy living. We frankly thought that might be a hard pitch as an annual resolution because it’s such an enormous topic with such a long journey at the front end, but we’re excited to help get you started on that journey while we work on financial goals and budgeting skills.

What Can You Expect to See The Month?

We always spend one of our favorite brainstorm sessions of the year creating the topic matter for each year’s resolution month. Here are the nine articles you can expect to see this month in support of helping you to achieve this goal.

  • The Individuality of Defining How Much Spend is Too Much Spend
  • How to Get Started with Figuring Out How Much of Your Budget is Caused by Addictive Consumerism
  • Budget Creation and Tracking Tips 101 for the Postconsumer
  • Tips for Setting Realistic Budget Goals and Incentives
  • Your Budget is Fine, But Your Happiness Level Isn’t. What To Do?
  • Taking the Hard Line: Learning to Just Say No and Tips for Other Alternatives to “Stuff”
  • Project: Make a List of Your Unnecessary “Stuff” Purchases Over 6 Months
  • Project: Create a Short Term and Long Term Budget
  • Quiz: Why Do You Overspend on “Stuff?”

Useful Resources to Support This Goal

This month won’t be the first time that we’ve talked about budgeting and finances at Postconsumers. In fact, we have an entire small library of articles on the topic. If your resolution and goal for 2017 (or any year for that matter) has to do with getting your budget under control, then we think that these specific resources may be a great place to get started.

As always, we’ll be discussing and updating this goal and topic on our social media channels, which you can follow at the links below.

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