The Raisin Exercise

Mindful Spending as a Path to Riches

For reasons I might tell you later, my income was cut in half this year. And before you start feeling sorry for me, nice person that you are, I’ll go ahead and give you one little piece of the story — I did it to myself. I’m earning less and saving more because that’s what I decided to do.

And here’s another reason not to feel sorry for me. Even though having less was hard at first, it’s taught me to be a mindful spender. And the more mindful I’ve gotten, the richer my life has become.

More is less

Since Jon Kabat-Zinn first wrote about it in 1990, the raisin exercise has become a staple of mindfulness training. If you already know it, feel free to skip over the next few paragraphs. But if you’re a mindfulness newbie or an established practitioner who wants to play along anyway, just for fun, start with rolling one single, tiny raisin out of a pack and hold it in your palm.

Next, spend a few minutes just looking at the raisin in all its uneaten glory. Notice whatever you notice about it — its variations in color, maybe, or its intricate little wrinkles, or its surface irregularities.

Touch it and take in the sensation. Is it cooler than your fingertips? Warmer? Is it firm? Squishy?

Roll it around on your hand and take note of its weight. Pretty insubstantial, right? Bring it up to your nose and draw its delicate fragrance in with your breath.

Now, allow your lips to part and lay the raisin gently on your tongue. Notice the texture and flavor as you hold it in your mouth. Feel it resting against your palate and teeth.

Then slowly, deliberately, begin to chew. Notice the pulp coming apart, the stickiness on your molars, and the gummy little bursts of flavor shocking your taste buds awake.

Swallow. Savor the lingering aftertaste. Take note of the interesting emptiness of your mouth.

That was some treat.

Now, contrast that with the way you usually eat raisins — shaking a handful out of the bag and tossing them down your throat while you scroll through Facebook, or watch TV, or pay your water bill online. Before you know what’s happening, the bag is empty, crumpled in the bottom of the trash can, and you’re rummaging around in the cabinets looking for something else because you’re still not satisfied.

That’s because rich lives aren’t about consumption

Friends, I hate to say it, but that is the way I was chewing through my life before I lowered my income. I was gobbling up experiences so mindlessly I barely tasted them. I was stuffing my face with stuff.

And who could blame me? Why have only one raisin when you can afford the whole bag? We all deserve to live a little, right?

It was my money. I earned it, and I can spend it any way I want.

But mindless consumption comes with a price. I thought my bingeing was filling me up. But in fact, it was deadening me to the delicious details of my days. I was full but I wasn’t fulfilled.

That’s because rich lives aren’t about consumption; they’re about appreciation. They’re about squeezing every little drop of flavor from those few special morsels you select from an endless array of possibilities.

Frugality is a conscious decision about where to channel your limited resources — your attention, your awareness, and yes, even your money. To choose carefully is to savor your life.

Is your mouth watering yet?

The patients in Kabat-Zinn’s clinic learned to consume mindfully. In the process, they got better at dealing with their chronic pain and other medical problems.

Mindfulness has other benefits too, such as reduced stress and improved sleep. It helps people lead richer lives.

Would you like to experiment with a financial version of the raisin exercise and see what mindful spending is like? Just follow these steps.

Step 1 — Reduce your income

That’s the hard one, I know. You may think you can’t live on less than you make. Certainly, I thought that, before I took the plunge.

But most of us can make do on whatever amount of money we bring home. When there are fewer dollars, we’ll stretch them further. We’ll cut wherever we need to cut. It just stands to reason, then, that the best way to live on less is to bring less home.

You don’t have to slash your actual earnings to do this, though. Just start fiddling around with what the IRS calls your adjusted gross income.

That’s what you’ve got left after subtracting contributions to your tax-deferred retirement accounts. Upping your contribution amount won’t reduce the amount of money you really have. It will just reduce the amount of money you have to spend.

If you have a 401K plan at work, that’s your easiest target. Just go into the plan’s website and increase the percentage you’re saving. Double it, if possible.

If you don’t have a 401K, you almost certainly still have access to an IRA. Open one. If you already have one, set up automatic deductions. If you already have automatic deductions, increase them.

If you’ve already maxed out your IRA, open an HSA. Or find other places to stash the cash. Just make sure it won’t be easy for the money to show back up in your wallet where it can be fiddle-farted away.

Reduce your income by an amount that will stretch your frugality muscles almost but not quite to the breaking point. That’s how you get the most bang for your bucks.

Step 2 — Become an expert

Once you’ve reduced your income, expand your mind. Become a personal finance ninja. Read every story on Medium that has “save,” “money,” “FIRE,” or “frugal” in the title. Learn how to live richly on less.

I found my own virtual mentor in Mr. Money Mustache and I’ll refer you to his site if you’re looking for specific tips about how and where to cut spending.

However, please be aware that MMM will threaten to punch you in the face if you waste your hard-earned cash on getting comfortable (air conditioning) or lazy (restaurant meals), or to boost your flimsy self-esteem (Botox, luxury cars, status brands).

Reading MMM and other finance bloggers helped me to identify my fatal frugality flaw. I minimize the cumulative impact of small purchases.

Before lowering my income, I thought of myself as frugal already because I owned a small house and a beater car. With those major expenses out of the way, I told myself I could have anything else I wanted. But the things I wanted added up and took on a life of their own.

Considered separately, small purchases are insignificant, harmless as snowflakes. I used to rack them up one carefree swipe at a time. But packed together on a monthly statement they’re more like an avalanche hurtling down a mountain, gathering up rocks and goat turds along the way.

I never saw it coming for me. I couldn’t see the blizzard for the flakes.

It took MMM’s repeated demonstrations to break through my denial about this. If you have the same weakness, do yourself a favor. Go to his blog and read every post from start to finish. Let him show you over and over and over again that 4+12+8+53+23+2+17+6+48+11+9+32+9+14+7 (or whatever your numbers are) add up to $255 (or whatever they add up to).

If you spend small sums like this every week on happy hours, dinners out, movies, thrift store treasures, and a little something from the app store, it adds up. It adds up to the tune of 13 thousand little greenbacks a year in the example above, or 130 thousand in a decade. And that’s before compounding.

Drill this knowledge into your own head so that Mr. MM doesn’t have to reach through your computer and punch you in the face.

Step 3 — Commit to living on your (new) income.

Now, put your learning to use by creating a budget based on your new income. Then stick to it no matter what.

Living on less won’t come naturally at first. Most major life changes don’t. That’s why I suggest sticking with the experiment for at least 6 months, so you can get through the initial adjustment period and give it a fair chance.

If you want to go back to your previous spending patterns when the experiment is over, you always can. You can even get back the money you stuck in your retirement accounts (minus a small penalty if you’re younger than 59 ½) and blow through it if that’s what you want to do.

But if you leave it where it is and continue living on less, you’ll be forced to be a mindful spender. You’ll be forced to be creative. You’ll be forced to grow.

And in the meantime, those balances in your retirement accounts will also be growing.

Ta-da! You’re rich!

Since I started living on less, I’ve developed some ideas about what the rich life means for me. It means knowing my priorities and sticking with them, for one thing. And it means having enough respect for my resources to spend them wisely.

Being frugal has sharpened my attunement to my inner compass. It’s kept me focused on my heart’s true desires.

The rich life is waiting for you too,* but it all starts with knowing when to say no and what to let go. It starts with a hunger to distill life down to its essence by eliminating the distractions and the junk. It starts with a decision to savor the carefully chosen experiences that make up the moments of your life.

Oh, and that story about why I cut my income in half? I’ll tell you some other time.

• No, I’m not a financial advisor, just a person who likes to think about things. My life is very rich but individual results may vary.

This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.