30 Tips for a successful no-spend month

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Every January I'm exhausted from holiday materialism and looking forward to the annual No Spend Month trends. Seriously! 





Reasons to do a No Spend Month

1) Saves you some money!

2) Teaches you what your baseline needs are - how little money could you live on if you suddenly had to cut your budget for reasons outside your control?

3) Inspires you to find strategies that might really save you money in the long run - cheap meals and  entertainment, automatic bills you can unsubscribe from. It's a reset.

Rules for the no spend month

1) You can buy food, but I'd recommend looking at the USDA Cost of Food Reports for your spending limits on food. You'll find that the Low plan doesn't give you budget to eat out, and if you can make it on Thrifty you're even better. 

2) You can pay your bills and anything you're legally required to pay, obviously.

3) You can donate to charities. One reason I budget so carefully is that money is precious in our world. I budget so I can share. 

4) Don't buy anything else. Ask yourself, "can I LIVE without this for a month?". Cut out alcohol, junk food, clothes, haircuts, shoes, event tickets. Find things to do for free. 

5) If there's a big wedding or occasion coming up, pre-buy a gift for it. I keep a stash of toys to give as gifts at kid birthday parties, and try to give charity donations as birthday gifts. 

30 Tips to make it work

I'm someone who finds it easier to avoid spending if I have things to DO instead, so here's my list to get your mind in the right place ahead of no spend.

Cut out temptations

  1. Avoid anything that shows you advertisements
  2. Unsubscribe from sale emails
  3. Delete shopping apps from your devices
  4. Unsubscribe from paper catalogs
  5. Log out of any shopping site that remembers your password

Avoid impulse spending

  1. Use curbside pickup to avoid browsing in stores
  2. Don't get a shopping cart, only buy what you can carry in the store.
  3. Leave online purchases in a cart for 24 hours before buying to re-evaluate whether you truly need them
  4. Add items to a wishlist instead of buying them right away
  5. Meal plan a week at a time so you're not going to the grocery store every day

Think about money

  1. Read through gofundme stories to remind yourself how precious money is in our world
  2. Translate the dollars you spend to your hourly wage to remind yourself of the time required to get those items
  3. Snap a photo of your donation piles to keep on your phone and look at
  4. Set up credit card notifications to text you for every charge. Hold each charge in your hand and ask if it sparks joy

Get stuff some other way

  1. Join a buy nothing group
  2. Find a new charity to donate to

Find support

  1. Have an accountability partner you ask about every purchase
  2. Get to the root of emotional issues that drive you to shop. Are you bored? Sad? Lonely? Don't be afraid to seek therapy.

Re-direct your time

  1. Sell things around your house to soak up your time
  2. Re-organize what you already have
  3. Exercise so you have less time to shop
  4. Read library books
  5. Listen to minimalism podcasts
  6. Volunteer for an organization that keeps you too busy to shop

Make it harder to spend

  1. Put away credit cards in a drawer
  2. Open a bank account that you can't access with a card
  3. Switch to a cash system

You can't change what you can't track

  1. Record every purchase in a spreadsheet
  2. Record your credit card balance every day in a spreadsheet
  3. Record the "purchases" total from every credit card statement in a spreadsheet

I think of all these things, the tracking and recording helped me the most. Starting a spreadsheet, obsessing over it, getting the numbers to occupy my headspace. But I really like spreadsheets so that might just be me. Even though I'm well out of debt, I still track my "purchases" balance every time I get a credit card statement. I can tell you my total spending every month, rolling average, whether I'm up or down, where I should be, and what I'll do next month to get there.

You know what didn't help? Feeling ashamed and guilty about my spending. I'm pretty quick now to tell people to shake those feelings off. They are not productive. If you're trying to improve NOW, that's something to be proud of! Shame is not a planning tool. It keeps us from getting help and asking for advice. Maybe getting over the shame is the first step... then you can make progress.

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