No Spend Challenge

We are doing a no spend challenge. What are the rules of a no spend challenge and how does it work? Back when I started to declutter our lives and become more minimalist I decided to save more money. We happened upon minimalism by giving up our cable to save some money, before 2016 I had never heard of minimalism. Over the past few years we have slowly decluttered every area of our home. Along with the decluttering process I have also cut way back on our spending and this year I want to see just how much we can save.

I have seen people do no spend days, months, and years in which most of the rules vary. Last year I did a no spend month and the goal was to not spend any money besides necessities. In that challenge I tried to use the food we already had in our pantry, not go out at all, and only pay for the things we had to. Obviously that challenge can’t last a whole year or you will eventually run out of food. That challenge did show me that something similar can be done.

No Spend Year

This year I am going for a larger goal, the no spend year! My main reason is to save money, but another reason is I want to challenge myself to not shop. I want to see if we can live with what we have and make the most of it. For instance I know I have enough clothes for all of the seasons, but can I go the whole year without buying anything?

Besides saving money I also want to free myself from the feeling that we need more. More decor, more clothes, more stuff in general. Hopefully with this no spend challenge I can focus on all of the projects that we have already started and need to finish. For instance only half of the kitchen cupboards are painted!

When we do spend money I want that to be on experiences and fun events with friends and family. With the money going towards ways to enrich our lives. Most experiences are free and I will be keeping this in mind when I am finding things for us to do.

Rules

Don’t shop for anything but food and only buy food we will eat right away. I don’t want to stock up on things.

Only replace items that we run out of, for example, deodorant, makeup, things we need.

If something breaks and we still want/ need it then we will replace it.

Pay for our mortgage, utilities, insurance, gas, food and business expenses.

Sometimes it can be easier to look for the next best thing rather than focus on all of the “things” or projects we already need to do. I have had a brand new toilet sitting in my garage for over 3 months. It just needs to be installed, but it is much easier to find a new more fun project to do. Hopefully this year will allow us to finish all of the half done projects.

Stay Away From Temptation

Don’t go shopping if you don’t need to. It is much easier to stop spending when you aren’t in a store. Keep a list of items that you feel you need, but wait to buy them. When I did a no spend month last year I kept a list of the things I thought I needed. The interesting thing was as time went by I realized I didn’t need those things after all.

Keep your goals in mind. I want to build our savings and eventually pay our house off sooner than 30 years. By keeping our goal in mind it will be easier to avoid shopping.

My goal is to save an extra $500. a month and I will do this by tracking all of my money.