I am no slave to junk food. I may eat it once or twice a week, sometimes with the family. But despite it not being a daily habit, it still goes a long way towards causing damage to both my pocket and health, especially with the rising prices for food of late.
So for 2022, I have a new saving goal in mind, which will help improve two hugely important areas of my life: my pocket and my heart, both in an almost literal sense.
Junk to Health to Wealth
The idea is simple: on the days I know I would go out and eat junk (usually over the weekend) I will withhold those purchases and instead save that money. At first, I thought I would just keep the money and spend it on something else, since it was part of my ‘personal spending money’ anyway. But I thought it is more effective if I diverted this saved money to a new saving program or even into a piggy bank. Why? To be able to physically see the result of this diversion initiative. In other words, in 6 months or 1 year from now, I will not only be able to go on the scale and see a difference in my weight , I should also realize some nice financial savings from this junk food boycott or reduction.
Putting it in OKR terminology
If you are thinking this in terms of ‘Objectives and Key Results’ , it could read something like this:
Objective: (based on historical data of how often I ate at junk food places and how much I spend) : To save $500 a year and reduce my weight by 7 lbs for the year by reducing how often I frequent these places.
Key results:
- Visit max of once a week (from two)
- Spend a max of $7.50 a visit
- Skip at least once a month from the remaining regular visits.
If I eliminate my visits from 2 to 1 visit a week , this alone would result into savings of $375 per year, based on 50 weeks. If I can also eliminate one extra visit per month, that is another $90, putting me close to my goal of saving $500 from this ‘Junk to Health to Wealth‘ initiative.
While the numbers look clear and the advantages are numerous, this will not be without challenges and distractions. There will be those random days and weeks where you are out with the family and are too far from home or can’t wait , so you just do the easy thing and buy junk. That is fine. We should almost build those in and try to make up by skipping the next visit to eat junk.
Good luck if you decide to do this and let us in the comments below how it goes.