Treat yourself. You deserve it.

And even if you don’t feel you deserve it – do it for the people who want to see you happy.

In a recent post, I opened up about my long battle with depression. I spoke of a few strategies I’d learned over the years to fight against it, and that one of the things I had to learn was the art of simply treating myself. How exactly I’ve learned to do that is a entire blog post in itself, so I’ve saved it for here. Today I’ll walk you through this practice I have labeled ‘The Crap Fund.’

To be clear, I don’t mean splurge on everything you fancy, but if you struggle to treat yourself then it might be time to develop the habit.

In my younger years, I had a hard time spending any amount of money on anything I wasn’t absolutely sure was worth it. And when money was tight, that meant basically nothing was ever worth it. I recognized a pattern of never treating myself, even to little things. It was a subtle way of being cruel to myself, and I needed to begin a new habit.

I started something called ‘The Crap Fund.’ It’s a monthly budget composed entirely of “throw away” money. Basically, an amount of money that I could ‘lose’ in a month and not feel guilty about it. However much it should be depends on the person and their own comfort levels.

For me, I based it off of the cost of going to the movies ($20 at the time, including concession – this was a while ago), because I used the logic that I go to the movies once or twice a month, spending this much money each time, not knowing whether or not the experience will end up being a waste of money. But I go because I want to, because something has got me excited enough to check it out, because I’ve been looking forward to it, and I’m willing to ‘lose’ that much money on the chance to see whether or not it’s worth it, and perhaps still end up enjoying it regardless.

I had already been applying this logic to games for a while. If I was interested in a videogame, but not sure if it would be worth buying, I would generally only pick it up if I could find it for $20 or less. The general rule was, if it can give me at least 2 hours of entertainment (the length of the average movie) then it’s no more of a waste of money than going to the movies. But I still had to put a monthly cap on it. I couldn’t take the same risk over and over again too many times too close together.

Then one day I observed my tendency to never buy anything for myself, specifically trinkets, due to this hyper-reservation I had developed with my money. I realized very few things were ‘worth it’ in my mind, and so I never treated myself to anything that caught my eye. I recognized this habit and wanted to stop it – to start treating myself better. And so, I merged this idea with the $20-rule for movies and videogames and formed what became known as The Crap Fund.

At the face of it – $20 a month (or whatever is a comfortable amount to you) is fairly simple, but in order to do it right, there are some additional rules I had to put in place for myself.

One – a $5 minimum must be spent each month.

The idea is to treat myself – to force myself to treat myself if I have to. Even if I can’t find anything around $20 to spend the whole month’s Crap Fund on, I at least need to find something small and cheap.

Two – It has to be crap (i.e. ‘not worth it’) but still something I want.

If you are like most people then you already have monthly budgets for plenty of things that are absolutely worth it, and savings for bigger expenses that are going to be worth it down the line. But that’s not what The Crap Fund is about. The Crap Fund is specifically and exclusively for things that you want but can’t (otherwise) justify spending money on. That’s why it has to be “throw away money.” It has to be an amount of money you won’t miss, but you’ll have taken a chance and treated yourself in the process. That’s the point here – to treat yourself – to be kind to yourself – to be a little bit selfish – on something that is neither guaranteed nor practical.

Three – money remaining in the fund by the end of the month can be carried forward.

This allows the (delayed gratification) purchase of anything that I really want but that is over $20 and not likely to be cheaper anytime soon. Because sometimes something comes around that I really want, but still can’t really justify spending the money on, and it’s over $20. The Crap Fund allows for a way of making that purchase eventually. And, because it’s only $20 a month ($15 remaining after the minimum $5 spending) that means that for bigger purchases it is a long wait – and that wait time allows me the time necessary to decide if it’s really worth the wait, or if I’d rather get something cheaper for the time being. The Crap Fund does not equate a ton of free money all at once – but can be an investment over the course of a few months if need be.

The rest are more like ‘amendments’ than rules.

One – The minimum $5 must be spent by the 15^th of the month at the latest. This prevents perpetual waiting to see if something better comes along. It’s not required that I spend the full $20 by mid-month – just the bare minimum.

Two – If it’s something I really want, and can’t really call ‘crap,’ but still feels overpriced, I can decide the amount I am willing to pay from regular funding, and use the Crap Fund for the remainder.

This allows the purchase of those kind of awkwardly in-between things where you know something is worth getting, regardless of the price, but still have trouble justifying the full amount.

Three – One-week forward allowance – with discretion.

Sometimes an offer is only available for a limited time, but the Crap Fund for the month has already been spent. This is an allowance for those times. I would suggest using it sparingly though, and, if necessary, putting a 50% cap on how much is in the forward, just to avoid blowing it all more than a month before the next allowance.

That wraps up my explanation of The Crap Fund. There is still one more post I want to do on my experiences battling depression for over a decade, talking about how that much time can cause shifts in perspective. I will probably post that next.

This info was originally posted on my Medium. You can click this link for the original article if you’d like to check it out.