Today is the beginning of Lent (in the Christian religion) a time of atonement for sins, a time of penance, and a time of reflection (spiritually). Last year I put out a Lenten financial Challenge, and a few folks joined in with my attempts to fix my financial ship.

This year I won’t call you folks out, you can do what you wish for your Lenten Financial penance, but I will attempt a few things to see if I can make my financial world a little easier to live with.

Do you need some ideas for what you might want to try? Remember Lent is a short(er) period of time, so you can experiment during this time, knowing that it will end in about 1.5 months or so. Some of my traditional suggestions are:

Lent

• Use cash instead of Debit and Credit cards. Making Cash King, means you are limiting how much spending you can do at any one time, and you might just realize how much you are spending by doing this. Say you take out $100 from the bank for the week, and suddenly realize you are out by Wednesday you are more likely to look back on what you are spending your money.
• Cut out buying lunch or coffee for the time (or cut out eating out in general). It could be another interesting exercise to give you a better feeling about how much you are actually spending in these areas.
• Look at your monthly bills (especially your utilities, Internet, telephone and cable), can you lower them by less usage? Can you lower them by calling and asking for a discount? If this makes you uncomfortable, fight your tendency to back down and go ask for a discount.
• Do you really need these services? Do you need a smart phone? Do you need full cable? Maybe turn them off for Lent and see if you can live without them? If you can now is a good time to try it.

Any other good ideas for Lenten savings, or financial exercises?

Get out your flapjacks, it’s Pancake Tuesday (or Mardi Gras if you are in New Orleans or France) again, or to add clarity it is Shrove Tuesday. Why do they call it Shrove Tuesday, well it is the day before Lent, as I have written before, and just to remind you, Shrove is a derivation on Shriving.

To Shrove is:

… the past participle of the English verb to shrive, which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by way of confession and doing penance.

Not a big fan of Church, or the Christian religion in general? That’s OK, but you can still use this in your financial well-being plan, by attempting to obtain absolution from your previous financial sins and doing financial penance.

You feel you don’t have any financial sins? Good for you, but remember, the only people you hurt by not admitting your sins in this case (financially that is) is yourself, so if you think you are trudging along happily financially, you can ignore this idea and keep on trucking, the way you have been.

I know that I have sinned financially (and in many other ways, but let’s not wander down that rat hole), so I will be spending Lent paying financial penance for my financial mistakes/sins/blunders. I find paying financial penance as a cleansing activity (no not like the folks that flagellate themselves with whips and such, just a financially spiritual cleansing).

What kind of financial transgressions do I speak of?

• Simple things like buying coffee out, or buying dinner out a little too much in the past year.
• Big things like not having a real financial plan for the next while in place
• Huge financial transgressions like using debt in a bad way
• The list could continue on, but you can get the concept of what I might mean

What will I be doing to pay penance? I still have a day to figure that one out (Lent starts on Ash Wednesday), but I have a few ideas in mind. Until tomorrow, I will enjoy the pancakes and ruminate on the possible ideas.