This is a throw down for Black Friday… I’ve got 2 challenges for you:

1. Make an extra student loan payment this week.

2. Opt Outside.

What’s up with these? Why is an anesthesia podcast dropping a challenge about what you should do on Black Friday? Because what you do on Black Friday matters. It matters for your future and our future. It’s kind of a big deal, actually.

The challenges are simple and the podcast is short – take a listen.

If you’ve got student loan debt, I challenge you to make an extra payment this week. Any amount. Just once. Take some money you were gonna put towards a consumer purchase and put it towards your loans. It’s a small step towards financial freedom and becoming debt free. If you can take one small step, then you can find ways to take another and another.

If you’re a SRNA or resident, don’t worry about making a student loan payment right now… you can start hammering on those once you’re a practicing clinician. But you have a similar challenge: skip Black Friday. Skip a consumer purchase. Save the money. Spend a little less. Your future self will thank you.

And if you’re someone who’s already paid their debt off, you have a challenge, too: give to an organization you believe in this week. Take a few dollars of what you were going to spend this weekend on sales & deals and give it to an organization you believe in. The one I gave to is Protect Our Winters (more on them below).

The second challenge is Opt Outside.

This challenges goes right to the heart of our annual post-Thanksgiving consumer holiday:  Skip the malls, the internet, the big box stores and your town’s shopping district this weekend and go outside and play.  Just skip the madness.  Avoid it.  Turn it off.  And go outside and play.  

Opt Outside started with REI – the giant outdoor sports retailer – in 2015 when they closed their stores on Black Friday, paid their 12,000 employees for a day of work any way, and encouraged everyone to get outside and enjoy the natural world around us.  

That year alone, 1.4 million people and 170 outdoor companies, organizations and nonprofits took Black Friday off to play outside.  To date, 700 organizations and 7 million people have chose to opt outside.  (These stats are according to REI’s website.)

Opt Outside is a remarkable idea.  Black Friday is the day, as I’m sure you know, when most US retailers try to scoop up as many consumer dollars as possible in order to get their profits “in the black” for the year.  And it’s a day when millions of people – consumers like you and me – commit to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars, stand in long lines, withstand incredible traffic jams and partake in literal stampedes in stores across the country in order to buy stuff.  Opt Outside changes all of that.  It challenges people to suspend consumerism on Consumerism’s Holy Day.  It challenges people to skip the madness and opt to go outside and play… something that’s absolutely free to enjoy.

Leave a comment for any reason but especially if you made an extra loan payment and if you gave to a special organization. And definitely leave a comment/photo of how you opted outside this Black Friday. Use the hashtags: #optoutside #fromtheheadofthebed

Check out Protect Our Winters here.