My dear reader.

I know, I know — I wrote about money last week too.

This reminds me of the time, a few years ago, when I was in a similar flow of constantly thinking and writing about money. I texted a fellow writer pal and said, “Why do I feel the compulsion to keep writing about this same topic from one trillion angles??” To which she said, “To be fair, it is a topic I suspect your readers want to read about from one trillion angels. I am one of them. Our culture is literally consumption, which is also our destruction. So essentially you’re writing about rebellion.”

Rebellion! I think about that a lot.

And while there are many other topics I plan to write about in the months ahead, I also know that I am far from the only person (especially in this particular corner of the internet, and especially right now) who is asking themselves similar questions to the ones I keep burrowing deeper into myself. Questions like: How much money is enough for me? and Why do I spend the way I spend? and How can I right-size my own consumption in service of a world with more equitably shared abundance? and Why is it sometimes so fucking hard to close the gap between what you say you want and what you actually do?

On January 1, with these questions in mind, I’ll be starting a 90-day low-spend experiment. Today’s newsletter is a bit different than usual — less of an essay and more of a tactical, tangible, bullet-point-heavy look at what this experiment is, why I’m doing it, and what my guidelines are.

If you’d like a recap post in early April let me know, and as with anything I write (particularly money-related stuff): please remember that this isn’t prescriptive, that I am just one person living one version of life, and that you can take what works and leave what doesn’t.

Okay, the experiment: