On April 30, I ended my Transaction Cleanse, a personal spending experiment proposed by Carl Richards on his Behavior Gap podcast. Mr. Richards challenged listeners to see how long we could go without making a single transaction. The concept: “to reset and increase our awareness” around spending. Actually reducing expenses is not an explicit goal of doing a cleanse, but (spoiler alert!) it is likely to be a welcome side effect. Read the article...
Running on Empty
Clueless
Over the course of this Transaction Cleanse, I’ve talked about the phenomenon of “stealth transactions” a few times. You know, you’re going about your day, minding your own business, avoiding transactions, maybe even sleeping. Then bam! It happens. Through the magic of automation, you’ve purchased something without taking a single action.
Continuance
Show Time
Back on April Fools Day when I started this Transaction Cleanse, I said I wasn’t a big fan of traditional food-related cleanses because they have the unintended side effect of making the “cleanser” want to binge. Sure enough, a Transaction Cleanse can also lead to binging, although not in exactly the way I anticipated.