Use a No Spend Month to Become Mindful of Money
For the entire month of July, Rachel’s family of three set a budget of $250 to spend on food, gas, clothing, household items, and entertainment. They’re doing this “to stretch ourselves to become more mindful and disciplined about the money we spend, and to save some extra money in the process.” Rachel has been posting her progress every week:
- During the first week, her family spent just $13. “Both of us remember what it felt like last year to not have enough money at the end of the month, so we’re trying to be really careful now,” she writes.
- The the second week was harder than the first. Sacrifices became more difficult. The family spent $44.
- In the third week, the family spent $109. They had guests for dinner one night, and they splurged on cherries. They also had to fill the tank in the car.
- During the recently completed fourth week, Rachel spent $52.
This project appeals to me because Rachel’s approach is sensible. It isn’t extreme. She’s examined her family’s habits and constructed a budget that forces them to make some sacrifices and to be creative, but which doesn’t cause them to feel deprived. In one post, she explains her rationale:
The goal isn’t to avoid spending any money, because that’s impossible. Money is a tool, and it’s main purpose is to spend it. If you didn’t spend any money, there would be no use for it at all. And there’s nothing grand about being miserly or cheap.
The true goal for No Spend Month is to practice making expenditures planned and purposeful, rather than impulsive and temporarily satisfying. Because it’s not about the $250, or whatever the budget may be, it’s about good habits and a clear perspective.
Rachel actually covers a lot of great frugality and simple living concepts at SmallNotebook. Recent entries include:
- Resisting the desire to acquire
- Healthy foods on the cheap
- Drive less, spend less
- How to find the cost of electricity
- Downgrading monthly services
- A beginner’s guide to soapmaking
I hadn’t heard of SmallNotebook before Amy Jo sent me the link yesterday. It’s a lovely little blog, and a worthwhile addition to my RSS reader.
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There are 45 comments to "Use a No Spend Month to Become Mindful of Money".
i’m doing my part this month.. i’ve been brown bagging my lunch at least once or twice a week
here’s a cool article on yahoo i just read too.. (cut your spending by $500 a month)
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/105450/Cut-Your-Spending-by-%24500-Per-Month
J.D., thank you so much for featuring Small Notebook. It’s an incredible honor! I love how Get Rich Slowly focuses on being purposeful about our finances and resources.
The Small Notebook site mentions a number of subjects I like such as how to eat healthy foods on the cheap and driving less. I find what’s good for the budget is also good for the environment — an added benefit!
Cool, thanks for sharing. I might try this out.
Email updated.
The only problem with this is that its like an accounting scam.
Basically it wounds like they lived off of food they had in the cupboards. So what happens the next month when all that gets replaced. Or try to do that a couple months in a row, then you no longer have food in the cabinets and you need to spend more on food.
We’ve made it through a “no-spend” weekend ourselves, and I’ve written about it a couple times. A “no-spend month” sounds even more impressive!
I like the basic idea of forcing yourself to live off what you have readily available and staying away from stores for a period of time–any period of time!
Thanks for sharing this one, J.D. I’ve visited Rachel’s site before (I think through Mom Advice or Simple Mom). It’s a great site!
I think it’s an extreme approach, not sensible. I second Ken, that they’re living off borrowed money (pre-stored food) and that her approach would not be sustainable for months.
$250 is also an extremely low number. I’d love to know where she lives. Where I am, if I were to buy milk (kid drinks a gallon a week), bananas (3 lb a week), and oatmeal (granted, the name brand I like that lasts 3 weeks), I’d be hard pressed to walk away spending less than $9 or $10. Peaches are $1.49 a lb, not her miraculous $0.40/lb. Her list of “six pounds of tomatoes, some nectarines, broccoli, cilantro, limes, and three pounds of ripe cherries” would run me around $27.15 (assuming 2 lb nectarine, 1 lb broccoli, 2 limes). Her $3/gallon gas is now $4.15. She didn’t buy things like diapers or tampons (which are essential).
Interesting experiment but I’m not sold on the extreme approach.
It obviously wasn’t meant as a do it continously approach, but more of a way to remind yourself to be more mindful of what you spend.
Not an every month approach, but a once a year, clean out the freezer and pantry and put the impulse shopping on hold.
I don’t think it’s about living off borrowed money exactly. It’s realizing how much money we spend without even thinking. I often go to the store for milk and come home with $50 of extra stuff. Budgeting, even in the stricter sense, makes you think about how much crap we buy.
I think it would be a great way to spend more time being mindful of your spending if that’s a challenge for you.
I’m sure that partner and I could go practically a whole month on what’s in our freezer/pantry alone with perhaps just a bit more for fresh fruit and dairy stuff.
I may suggest a modified version of this project to him tonight – he commutes to salem by carpool so I think his portion of gas would not count since there’s no other reasonable way to get there, however I can mix up driving with biking and taking the bus fairly easily.
Maybe I’ll start with a no spend week and see how that goes.
“The true goal for No Spend Month is to practice making expenditures planned and purposeful, rather than impulsive and temporarily satisfying.”
This was the purpose behind making an estimate in January of this year of all my recurrent fixed costs, setting a budget based on them, and tracking each time I spent from the allotted amounts in each area. I also made the choice to spend from my biweekly cash allowance for as much as I could. Normally I would have a bit of allowance left over each fortnight to throw in the emergency fund. This amount shrunk over the course of ’08, BUT the amount I put on credit cards plummeted. It made impulse buys very obvious, not hidden away on a credit statement, and forced me to budget carefully for the rest of that allowance period. Plus everything was recorded and accountable.
And that’s the key behind personal finance, frugality, a No-Spend Month, weight loss, improving one’s food intake, decluttering, or any other habit change: discipline via accountability. Someone could probably write some sort of master-essay showing a unified field theory for all of this.
Reminds me a bit of Compacting (which, strangely, it doesn’t seem JD has talked about on GRS) – the practice where people try to spend a year (or longer!) not buying anything new (except food/health products). I did it for one year and it was extremely good for my finances. It was originally started as an environmental movement, but it has gained steam as a general frugality practice as well.
Thanks for posting. I love the site, and will probably become a frequent reader.
I don’t know that I could manage a no-spending month, but I might start a no-spending week every month. That might help me squeeze out a little unnecessary spending, and force to me to use some of the excess groceries clogging up my pantry.
We did something like this last January. We didn’t have a set budget, but we tried to limit ourselves to only essential spending. It wasn’t about not spending ANY money, and it wasn’t about seeing if we could survive on the food and various sundries we already had on hand. It was about recognizing needs vs. wants, planned purchases vs. impulsive ones, and noticing when shopping may have been being used to fulfill some other need or desire.
Being mindful for a month carries over to future months. We continue to be more aware of our spending habits. However, I think a “refresher course” may be warranted for January 2009.
Actually, it’s not an accounting scam at all – it’s a way to clean out your cupboards without the intention of throwing things away.
I love the idea, and I think some might take it too narrowly? $250/mo might not work for some, so pick a different number… The point is to be more aware of what you really need and what you already have.
It is a great way to become mindful. I tried a month a few months ago and discovered that many of the things I wanted but had to put on hold until the next month (I know, that’s cheating) I ended up not buying at all. It forced me to come up with creative solutions to what I needed, using what I already had in the apartment, instead of automatically running to the store.
I adore Small Notebook, and am an avid reader and fan of Rachel’s. She’s worthy of your mention!
I did this a couple years ago and found that aside from things like entertainment and eating out, I didn’t actually spend any less, I merely deferred spending until the next month. Come the next month I had to buy cat food and canned goods that I’d used and not replaced during my spend nothing month.
Now, rather than do that I just try to keep my discretionary spending down. Putting off grocery shopping doesn’t have any net effect, but deciding not to buy any new books or videogames in a month does.
I did this in July too for my family – put away the CC and withdrew $550 in cash ($500 for groceries/food/gas) and $50 for misc. items (haircuts, rec center pass, etc). By last week, my husband took to calling it NO FOOD MONTH! 🙂 So essentially it was a {lesson} in NEEDS vs. WANTS. For me, I was way more mindful of what I purchased (having a limited amt. of cash) vs. pulling out the CC everytime I was at a store. I love Rachel’s blog, but I still have NO IDEA how she did it with only $250.
J 🙂
I’m not sure buses save a lot of money if you already own a car, at least not where I live. Our truck gets a measly 19 MPG and yet it still costs about the same for gas as bus fare for the same route. The only way my family could significantly cut down our commuting costs is if one of us wasn’t working for the month or if one or both of us started bicycling to work. (Which is not out of the question… I think it would actually take less time than the bus for me personally)
An interesting exercise. Even if you don’t make it, I am sure valuable lessons will be learned.
Best Wishes,
D4L
What a misleading headline! When this popped up in my RSS reader I was excited and had visions of a guy sleeping in an uninsured, immobile van, showering at the facilities at his workplace, scoring scraps of food wherever he could, maybe mowing somebody’s lawn in exchange for good home cooked meal. I’m disappointed.
What’s been achieved here is living within a sensible budget. This is great, and I applaud the author for taking actions to improve their finances, and get spending under control, but let’s not sensationalize it, even if it is sadly a rare accomplishment in America today.
My husband and I have done something similar once or twice a year ever since we were married 11 years ago. March is always a “no spend month” because it has no gift-giving obligations. It is also at the end of the winter, when my desire to “binge spend” is at its peak, so its a real challenge. We call it “no spend” but its really a mental exercise in defining needs and wants. Even needs get deferred… and then suddenly, when April comes, you realize you really didn’t need it!
To be fair, I haven’t read her site, but my guess is that her family is simply deferring usual payments for a month. I’ve done exercises like this in the past to save a few extra bucks and get spending under control, but they inevitably become, to a large degree, exercises to see how long one can go without spending money you will eventually spend anyway. So instead of spending your usual $900 on X expenses each month you spend only the $300 you allotted the first month and $1500 the next. At the end of the day you spend the same amount of money and had to experience a tortuous month of crap food and no entertainment etc.
This is terrible. What this country once known for affluence and prosperity has come down to? People eating out of old rusty cans and rummaging through endless coupons? It makes me feel terrible inside. I knew what America was like…
I find that breaking up a routine, no matter what that routine is, will often allow you to look at your spending from a different perspective. This is good because it will either confirm that you have been doing what you feel is right or give you insight into a possible other way of doing it. At least for me, routine is my biggest enemy because I don’t even question what I have been doing. I think small projects like this are beneficial for anyone that wants to get a new perspective on their spending.
Good exercise, but I still wait for a post on a real NO-spending… week-end, 3 days, whatever 🙂
i do this over the summer vacation, live on what’s in the house, and use what is not spent on air conditioning. putting the AC on 70 is a luxury for me these days.
cathy – diapers and tampons are not essentials. A lot of people use cloth diapers with rubber pants. A lot of women use a diva cup or cloth menstrual rags.
I second what Cathy said about diapers and tampons. I have used the Diva Cup (well, the Keeper, actually) for years, and I save a TON of money that I’d otherwise be spending on tampons.
I think the point is to see – especially if you write down your expenses for a month – and then go a month conciously being careful, you can see where your money goes and then decide conciously how you want to spend.
Using what is in the house-someone said well you just have to replace it next month – but sometimes people don’t realize how much they already have that is not being used(and with food-you may have to throw it out if you don’t use it). I was amazed how many cleaning products/ingredients for cleaning products I had in various cupboards, closets and the basement- so it was several months before I had to buy more.
Neat! My boyfriend and I thought this same idea up this winter, and decided that in February (in Canada, when it’s so cold that all you really want to do is stay in the house and hide anyway) we would spend zero unnecessary dollars. We called it “Cheap February”.
This meant that trips to the grocery store only bought food for meals and no junk food, we didn’t eat out at restaurants, brought lunches to work, didn’t buy any games or the like, and only watched movies and TV that we already had in the house.
While we didn’t add up the money savings, it was a huge success. We only found ourselves cheating once, when we went skiing for a weekend and couldn’t figure out how not to eat out. It reminded us how to tell the difference between necessary expenses and luxury expenses. I plan on doing this again next year!!
I’ve done this in the past, before I knew it had a name. I didn’t have a set budget, but my goal was to limit all the extra things I buy or do that end up on my credit card statements. My two CC bills usually add up to around $1400 per month, and during the months I tried this, I kept them under $400. It was very rewarding. And after a couple large purchases in the last two months, I should do it again.
If this exercise (mental or in practice) doesn’t work for you, you most likely already have your monthly expenses down to a bare minimum. It worked very well for me because I saw where I needed to plug up the leaks.
For some people tampons are essentials, maybe I’ll just leave it at that.
Reading this makes me realize that I have been ‘mindful’ about my money constantly. I walk to grocery store, use ‘green’ bags instead of plastic, buy on-sale bulk food such as oatmeal and dried foods. For perishable food, I buy them on weekly-sale basis, make my food accordingly, and make sure that I use all the food before buying more. I often ask what I can save on and still enjoy my standard quality of life. For example, I do not have cable TV anymore. I spend most of my time on internet, so I can get news from it. I don’t like to watch movies on TV because of too much commericals, and I don’t watch much movie anyway. So, I would rather rent a movie once a week. Before driving, I makes plans to stop different places nearby so that I don’t have to make different trips. The main thing we should keep in mind is this question: “How can I get more but pay less?”
Great ideas! I am in the middle of a self-imposed grocery reduction. It’s nice to know there are other people out there with similar ideas. I’m finding that menu planning keeps the spending down, but I am relying a lot on stores of food I already have. Bartering/Trading wasn’t mentioned…I am working with some neighbors and friends to plan our spring gardens with trading in mind.
I’m a big fan of the spending fast. We used weekend spending fasts (no Home Depot, no eating out, no drinking out) and work week spending fasts (no lunches out at work, no picking up take out, no 7-11, etc.) many times during the year we paid of $55,500 in debt. We never tried a month long spending fast, but it sounds like a great idea.
I like this more than most saving gimmicks because the test situation *itself* is worthwhile even in the absence of a greater plan to save. It gets better if one can prolong it, of course, but even if this amounts to nothing more than one tight month, that’s going to be good for the ol’ pocketbook.
I disagree with those who say it’s just postponing replenishment, on the basis that all too often people fail to even use up what they have before buying more. Can’t tell you how many heels of bread go wasted around my house, despite my relatively aggressive intake of sandwiches. An evening out turns into a dinner out, then a weekend meal with the in-laws, and then you’re just too tired to cook after church Sunday… next thing you know, you’ve spent an extra $70 on food in a weekend and your remaining milk, eggs, and cheese have all gone bad. Sometimes, it’s good to “eat oneself” for a while and trim down the overflow.
I think the critics of Rachel’s month-long project are missing the point. It’s not really about saving money – it’s about living deliberately.
Love your site, Rachel! Thanks for sharing, J.D.!
We do this every year or two. The kids (surprisingly) love it! We call it “Thrift Month” and don’t set a specific amount but don’t eat out and don’t buy anything unnecessary. It keeps me mindful for months afterwards. In fact, I think you’ve motivated me to set a new one in August (they are usually in January, which is sadly my birthday!)
Just started my No-Spend Month today. Should be interesting, as a single girl living in a ski resort town in Alaska!
By the way, thanks for all the great content and ideas I get off your site. It’s always a worthwhile read.
I am pursuing the no spend month. It is aready the 5th and I am messing up. Today I had a dentist bill, had lunch with my dearest friend. Bought a bottle of 18.00 vodka for next weekend. (Birthday – 53) I feel bad. I hope to retire in 5 years with a decent pension, but with a house note I cannot. My goal is to pay off my 82,000. loan. I owe 3000.0 in credit card debit. I have two cd’s and an emergency fund. But I cannot find the money to pay off the principal so I can retire. I make 40,000. per year. I live in a very rural area with no public transportation, Fuel to go to work is 100.00 week. I do not eat out. I get produce from the local farmers, I have oput up a busel of corn and tree bushells of peas. very inexpensive, but I still feel like I cannot obtain my goals of paying off my mortgage in 5 years. I am scared about losing my home in retirement – I plan to work parttime, but I am so confused and saddened that retirement may not be an option. I love your ideas and info. Thank you
@Lily:
have you heard of Buy Nothing Day? this article reminded me of that holiday..
http://tinyurl.com/649n8s
Sure. More symbolic than effective but I like the initiative. 🙂
There is a similar concept at work in NZ and Australia on the Simple Savings website (www.simplesavings.co.nz). This is the $21 week challenge – feed your family for a week on $21. Members use it to clear out their pantries and freezers, free up some money in a hurry etc. The idea is not to use it as a long term strategy, but as one of many saving tools. Some people do it once and some do it once a month. I’ve done it a couple of times when I’ve had a tight month and discovered the many wonderful uses of a tin of tomatoes – not to mention the shocking discovery that I had so many tins of tomatoes in the pantry!