To elaborate, I watched one (or three) too many episodes of Oprah's Diet Diet series on re-run this summer and it made me ill.*  Right now I have no personal debt, I only have an Amex for work.  Achieving this state was not just a financial win for me but a mental one; it is VERY hard to make the shift to what's-in-the-bank-only spending.  But trouble is, once you make that change you can still, in theory, spend every cent in your bank account, which obviously isn't that smart or forward-thinking. 

For whatever reason I just decided about 20 days ago to not spend a red cent all month on anything but food, transportation and essentials (like, I needed Tylenol, normal-priced shampoo, etc.).  Importantly, this wasn't based on my finances - I actually really wanted to try to do this when I was feeling quite "flush." (It's all relative ... ).  I didn't want my spending to feel restricted by means - only by will.

All my life I've been that person who could smoke and then quit with no problem, party it up or not drink at all just because I didn't feel like it, etc.  It didn't really matter what the "vice" was, I could swing from mild excess to monkishness pretty effortlessly. [more after the jump...]

Image credits (left to right from top): Vanessa Jackman, NAST, ALL REMAINING: Stockholm Street Style

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