If you can’t stop spending impulsively, play this game: How long can I go without spending a dime?
When it comes to spending, most people get a salary and usually just buy things on the fly. They are not really thinking too much about it. Ways that can happen:
- Craving ice cream
- Coming back home from work, in traffic, see gala, buy
- See bend down select, buy
- On your way back from church, see the girl selling cream, buy
- See an expensive bottle of perfume that smells nice, even though you already have a collection of bottles at home, buy it.
- See pizza buy
- See the fifty-eleventh random toy for your toddler, buy
- See a nice review of something on Twitter, and order immediately
Which, in and of itself, isn’t bad. I mean, I’m not going to tell you not to buy food if you are hungry in traffic, or how to spend your money. There isn’t really anything bad about buying yourself something nice. A potential issue arises if you are already struggling financially or have been wondering where your money has been going. Make no mistake, even high earners are not exempt from this; it’s just that their own impulsive spending is usually on a higher level, for luxury goods. It’s the international trips, the new extra car they swear they need.
Mindful spending is about being very aware of everything you spend on. This might be for you if you want to train yourself to save more, find out where your money is going, or spend less impulsively. Let’s talk about it.
Exhaust the Free: A Mental Model for Mindful Spending
Definition: A principle that says before you spend a single Naira, fully utilize the resources you already have, whether it is free time for DIY, natural resources like sunlight, or food you already bought. Draws from Stoicism, Mindfulness, Minimalism, and FIRE
The idea of exhausting the free is about breaking the pattern of thinking where money is the first resource you turn to when you need something. It is a challenge where, for a period of time, you create boundaries around money by limiting all spending to the lowest possible level you can, even to zero. Instead of buying something, you replace it with a free alternative or something you already own. And if you don’t have alternatives, shelf the idea of buying that thing completely, if you can.
An example from my life. I think back in December 2024, I noticed that my electricity costs were climbing quickly because of the so-called Band A. I knew through tracking my expenses monthly that I used to spend ₦20,000 – ₦25,000 on electricity costs. My electricity costs climbed up to ₦40,000. Then, when it climbed up to ₦80,000, I decided that that was unacceptable. I had tracked my kWh usage and found that the major culprits were my ACs.
For every hour that I had the AC on the coldest setting, it cost me ₦5000. So I was burning money literally. I wasn’t seeing the value in Band A. So I decided to exhaust the free, and natural resource that God gave us all; fresh air. I also had this habit where during the day all my curtains would be shut and I would turn on the lights; but now I decided to- you guessed it, exhaust the free. Every morning, all curtains in the house get drawn open to let natural light in, and I’d use the lights from the solar connection only when night came.
What surprised me about this game was that for the first time since I moved into my apartment, I realized that my house was naturally cool because I lived on the ground floor of a two-storey building. I’d been missing out the whole time on opening my windows. Even without the AC, I still had to sleep with a duvet to feel warm at night, just from the combo of the fresh air from the large windows, the coolness of the ground floor, and my rechargeable fan on the lowest speed. My electricity bill went back down to ₦20,000. That was the point of no return. I couldn’t justify going back to the AC.
The money-systems person in me refused to burn ₦60,000 more on electricity even if I had it, using my AC for something I could get for free. If, for whatever reason, my apartment starts being hot, I can see myself going back to turning on the AC, because I am no longer getting the coolness from my environment for free.
I narrate all this to say, you can use “Exhaust the Free” as a mental framework to change your habit of impulsive spending or to cut excess costs.
Determine Your Timeline
The ideal way to start the game is by determining how long you want to play for. A week, two weeks, a month?
Create a ‘Needs Only’ List
The best way to determine what you need would be if you had been tracking your spending to the best of your ability from prior months, but if you already haven’t been doing that in the past, then the next best thing is to take a pen and paper, and literally think of everything you’d need for the timeline you decided in the last step. And I mean everything. Only the relevant things, be honest with yourself. List them all. Prioritize the list from the most important to the least important.
For instance, if you are playing for a week, then you’d want to determine everything you need for that whole week. I’m talking transport fare to work, fuel, foodstuffs, pepper, meat, etc. Make a food timetable for that week if you like, and extrapolate the ingredients. The goal here is to think of only the most important things. You shouldn’t be adding things to that list; you know darn well you’d usually buy impulsively.
Buy Once
Take that list and estimate how much everything costs. Determine if you will be buying everything or not. Set a day or two aside (preferably weekends) and go buy these things on the list.
Fasting
Once you return from the market with your items, you are now officially on a spending fast. Consider yourself self-contained for the duration of the period. You have everything that you need. Cook all meals, avoid unnecessary spending that you know deep in your heart is unnecessary. You are fasting. You want chicken pie from Chicken Republic? You had better open a YouTube tutorial and start baking. You want a nice chilled drink, well, make one. It’s not that hard, buy tigernuts and blend or make a pineapple and banana smoothie. Find a replacement, be creative. If you have free time, you can DIY. If you are busy, then tough titties; if you don’t have that thing, you won’t die.
During the fast, it’s not that you can’t spend money at all. But if you do, make sure it is only on absolutely important things like a medical emergency or salt. Before you buy anything, make sure you have done your best to find a free alternative from something you already own at home.
Finish that bottle of perfume before you buy the new one entering your eyes. Do you absolutely, really, really need a new shirt right now? You are craving Shawarma? Then make it at home now if you have time. Making shawarma bread is very trivial. The rest is literally fried/grilled shredded meat, mayonnaise, hot sauce, cabbage, and carrots. Oh, what was that? It’s too much stress? Fine, then eat bread or rice.
My point is, find an alternative or don’t buy it at all. Or better still, find a nice recipe on YouTube to make something new with the ingredients you already have. Want to go to the club to blow some money on expensive drinks, maybe don’t? Take a rain check. Eyeing an expensive gadget, you might have ordered immediately? Add it to your wishlist. You may even end up buying it after the fast. But right now, calm down. Ask yourself: “Do I actually need this? Is there a cheaper or free alternative I’ve ignored?”
The Mental Game
When you exhaust the free, you begin to reprogram your brain’s reward system. Your mind might resist it at first; like any withdrawal, it can feel uncomfortable. You might feel tempted to spend on things you would have normally spent on in the past and catch yourself spinning tales to rationalize why you need to buy something you know deep down is unnecessary. There’s also the pressure of seeing your peers buy something you would have joined in on. You start thinking: What if people think I’m broke, cheap, or stingy? Or it may manifest as boredom, of you thinking: “This free thing is not as good as if I paid for it“. These are just mental traps.
The goal is not to make you feel deprived; you may feel that way, but that’s only because you have built a habit of letting yourself give in to almost every urge. Or maybe it’s not even that you spend impulsively, maybe your income simply can not support you buying so much. Either way, the dopamine boost that used to come from spending now starts coming from finding a clever free solution, or skipping the expense entirely.
What you are doing is a form of mindfulness: mindful spending. It forces you to become hyperaware of your impulses. It brings to the surface how badly you want to spend on things you probably shouldn’t.
Many people are addicted to spending without knowing it. If you end up buying something after thinking it through, that’s still a win, because the exercise trained you to pause and ask if the purchase was truly worth it.
Stick to it by remembering why you started this habit in the first place. Start a list of all the things you considered buying but didn’t. Make it fun. Track how many days you go without spending or how long you last without buying any non-essentials. Compare your total spending during “Exhaust the free” to how much you spent before it, and celebrate your progress.
Remember, you are saying not yet, not never; most wants fade after a few days.
What You Gain
What you gain is a mindset shift. Over time, if you stick with this exercise long enough, you’re going to gain clarity. You start to see what you actually value, not just what’s trending. You discover you can do without many things you thought were non-negotiable. You become more aware of the situations that trigger your spending habits. You start to see how much money you were leaking into non-essentials, especially if you’re on a low income. If you were struggling to stay afloat, this can help you survive long enough to land better pay or build new skills.
And most importantly, you build delayed gratification. The ability to pause, wait, and choose long-term value over instant rewards. This is the same muscle that helps people stretch their funds, avoid waste, save, invest, build, and grow. It’s one of the most underrated life skills, and it starts with small decisions like this.
While you are doing the challenge, framing it as a temporary experiment might help you mentally come to terms with the idea of spending mindfully, so you don’t feel locked into a new lifestyle too quickly. There is a good chance you are going to come out of it with better saving habits and a psychological boost in confidence and creativity. You will know you can make smart choices even when it feels hard. That’s wealth-building behavior from the inside out.
Who knows, maybe you will decide to keep exhausting the free or a variation of it into your lifestyle.
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Try the Exhaust the Free challenge for one week and see what you discover. I’d love to hear your story at hello@mindfulnaira.com.