What if you could save over 40% of your income in the coming month to do whatever you wanted with it?

What if one single month of intentional choices could break bad spending habits you've had for years?

And what if the fastest way to reach your financial goals in 2025 isn't making more money… it's stopping the money leaks you don't even notice?

Everyone is about to start setting New Year’s resolutions.

A lot of people are going to choose goals like getting out of debt, saving up for a down payment, or investing more. Great ideas, but… without a plan, they probably won’t make progress!

What if you did a New Year’s challenge, though? Something you can commit to for a month, measure, and see immediate results from.

That’s what we’re covering today: the ultimate challenge to get ahead of your goals and get in the best financial shape of your life this year. 

Two words: Spending. Freeze.

Today, we’re covering:

✅ What a spending freeze is (and why it works when resolutions fail)
✅ The rules: what counts as essential vs. non-essential
✅ Real math showing how much you could save
✅ Why this challenge works for everyone, not just people in debt

Bon appétit! 🧑‍🍳

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If you haven’t heard of a spending freeze, here’s the rundown.

For one month, you put a complete freeze on any non-essential spending. Two things will most likely happen: 

We love the second one. The first one is the key though.

The point of this exercise isn’t just for you to save more money for a month. It’s really to show you that you can probably cut back on more spending if you want to and if you really put your mind to it.

Now, we aren’t saying you should cut back on all non-essential spending all the time. That’s not a very sustainable way to live; if you never get to buy or do anything fun with your money, you’re likely to get frustrated with your lifestyle.

But a one-month challenge to spend as little as possible? THAT is how to start the year off on the right foot!

Alright, here’s the blueprint.

Food, bills, rent, gas. 

That’s it.

Unfortunately, Netflix and eating out at restaurants don’t count as non-essentials.

(Ok, you could set a rule to eat out, like, twice in January if you wanted to.)

Basically, if you want to join in on this challenge, then for 31 days just pause all your monthly subscriptions, don’t eat out, don’t buy new clothes, and don’t go to coffee shops.

We think that genuinely anyone at any level of income could benefit from this challenge.

After all, who can’t relate to this on some level:

Ok, so maybe you don’t relate to that (if so, well done!) 😂

Still, the spending freeze challenge is not just for people trying to get out of debt or save for a down payment. Here are some potential reasons for the challenge:

And more importantly, regardless of your financial goal, this challenge can give anyone a sense of accomplishment and the knowledge that you have what it takes to do difficult things.

That might sound silly or like a platitude, but trust us, it’s not. In a world where it is too easy to fill our minds with dopamine, choosing to add discipline to our lives shapes us into people of substance. People who can accomplish their goals and are in it for the long haul!

Alright, so maybe you’re intrigued by this challenge, but you aren’t convinced that you actually spend that much on “non-essentials.”

Let’s run through a hypothetical example and see if you still feel that way at the end! (Honestly, you might, because our readers are great with their finances, but still 😉)

Let’s say your household brings in $115,000 a year total. 

That comes out to roughly $9,583 a month pre-tax. We’ll estimate that after taxes, you make $7,300 a month. We’ll calculate everything with that figure in mind.

Total: $4,150

$7,300 - $4,150 = $3,150

So, all things considered, you would be saving $3,150 this January (or 43% of your after-tax pay)!

That’s huge. 43% of your income can now go to any of the following:

If a spending freeze seems intimidating, we don’t blame you. It’s difficult to think about not buying anything that you don’t absolutely need.

But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth it! And more importantly, doing a spending freeze challenge this January doesn’t mean you have to adopt some sort of hyper-minimalist lifestyle from now on. A lot of people do “dry January” where they don’t drink at all, and it serves as a great mental reset. Maybe this could be the same, but as a financial reset!

Cheers to getting 1% better each week! 🥂

We’d love to hear about it—and your story could help someone else do the same.
Just hit reply and share.

Thanks for reading,
—Your friends @ Future Funders 🍽️

P.S. Forward this to a friend who’s trying to grow their net worth this year! 😤