Last week I completed what I am going to call an Experiment In Anti-Mustchianism. It wasn't fully Anti-Mustchian, nor was it a full week - I couldn’t do it. It lasted Tuesday - Saturday.
I took last week off work and my uncle came into town and was previously a high-end restaurant owner will a pension for wanting to try ‘great food’ of the area - without going into details, I was going to foot the bill on this trip. On the flip side, our other entertainment consisted of hiking over 30 miles that week - but I put a lot of miles on the car to reach some great mountain hikes and we drank good wine/beer/scotch in the evenings in front of a bonfire.
All ‘n all I spent $550 on food/dining, gas and “shopping” in 5 days. Holy crap on a stick, batman! That’s insane! It actually puts a knot in my stomach again just by looking at the numbers. Money aside we ate more, ate unhealthy, I worked out less (aside from the 30 miles of hiking I did not ride my bike at all) and even gained 4 pounds!
Luckily, I had prepared for this expenditure, knowing months in advance that this week was coming, and was not taken totally by surprise. But it was still difficult to do.
It did, however, put some significant stress on my relationship with the SO, but also showed how far we have come from our purely anti-mustchaian thinking. After an unusually expensive dinner, my SO was freaking out, feeling guilty and was completely taken aback that we would spend such money on dining. “You’ve made me so frugal,” she said. “It makes me sick spending money like that!”
By Sunday we immediately fell back into our mustachian spending habits and felt better - we cleaned out our fridge (as things had spoiled), went grocery shopping and cooked at home, prepped for this week’s lunches, did laundry, prepped the bike for work and finished up the day with netflix and a book. I was absolutely amazed how spending money now stresses us out, rather than making us feel better.
Looking back, I have no idea how I spent money and lived anti-mustchaian before. It’s crazy to think about.
I don’t believe I’ll be doing another Experiment like this in the foreseeable future. It just wasn't anywhere close to being fun or enjoyable in any way.