Here’s my challenge to you: this weekend, spend no money. That’s right – I challenge you to spend No. Money. At. All.*
A super way to save a little cash is to have a no spending weekend (or better yet a week!).
Weekend spending can really add up, whether it’s from kids’ activities, dining out, going to a movie, or shopping.
Now, you may have to prep a little (make sure you have food and drink!) but, hey, it’s only two days, for goodness sake. You’ll survive! I have faith in you. And you may be amazed at the savings and creative things you’ll find to do with your time
*Okay, so you’ve got plans this weekend – do it next weekend, but just do it!
(We had a pseudo no-spend weekend recently – read on to see what we did!)
Things To Do On a No-Spend Weekend
- De-clutter (and sell your stuff – turn it into a money-making weekend!)
- Attend free music/movies in the park
- Have a picnic
- Hike
- Go to a park
- Bike ride
- Play board/card games
- Host a potluck
- Learn a new skill (change your own oil 🙂 )
- Read a book
- Make a new recipe (try this tasty, frugal recipe for chicken curry)
- Play with your kids
- Create a piece of art for your home
- Sort, print and organize photos on your phone and computer
- Build a fire – in a fireplace or fire pit either at home or at a local park
- DIY something (refinish or paint some furniture)
- Visit a free museum
- Volunteer
- Camp in your backyard
- Go fishing
- Go to the beach
- Explore your library (movies/books/passes)
- Take pictures
- Make a budget
- Re-design a room using what you have at home (using Pinterest for inspiration!)
- Make lists (holiday, meal plans, back-to-school)
- Write your goals
- Garden
- Slow it down (just relax!)
- Host a clothing swap
- Write
- Draw or paint
- Play a video game
- Organize your cabinets
- Sit outside and take in your surroundings with a good cup of coffee/tea, or a spiked lemonade 😉
Think you can do more than just a weekend? Take the No Spend Month Challenge!
We had a pseudo no-spend weekend a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what we did:
Saturday
Promotional test at our martial arts school. As black belts at the school, my husband and I help out with the test. We hold boards, work with students, spar and judge at the test. Since many of the black belts have a tradition of meeting for breakfast prior to the test, we didn’t skip this. So, breakfast was the only exception to our no-spend weekend (we spent $39 on breakfast since we bought breakfast for two of our young black belts who are heading off to college).
Lunch with my parents…on them. Hey, they invited us! 🙂
Garden chores. I harvested 22 pounds of veggies, pulled the green bean plants, watered and planted cabbage seeds.
Replaced muffler on Jeep. My son bought a new muffler for his Jeep, so my husband and son worked on that.
Updated our net worth. We have a Google sheet we track our net worth on, in addition to using the free net worth tracking tool on Personal Capital. (Our no-spend weekend was the last weekend in July; we update/review net worth at the end of each month.)
Wrote July Grocery Spending Update post. Click on over if you haven’t seen it yet.
Grilled brats, cooked homegrown sweet corn and green beans.
Chopped veggies for canning salsa on Sunday.
Went for a short ride in Jeep. To hear the new, noisy muffler, of course. Boys!
Hubby built a fire and mixed cocktails. I enjoyed the fruits of his labor.
Sunday
Played Pokemon Go. We went to a park and walked around to catch Pokemon. This is one activity our teenagers agree to do with us, plus it gets us a little exercise and we meet all of the other friendly people catching Pokemon in the park.
Canned salsa. I forced requested my husband’s assistance with canning the salsa and, though he’s not crazy about spending the afternoon in the kitchen, he dutifully helped out.
Relaxed and ate some salsa.
Picked 15 pounds of veggies from the garden.
Cooked veggies for dinner.
Paid bills.
Watched 45 minutes of Fixer Upper on Netflix. (Netflix is new to us…again. I cancelled for a while and am giving it another shot. As long as they keep some HGTV shows on there, I’m perfectly happy to pay the minimal monthly fee.)
This is not an unusual weekend at home for us, though it seems like we haven’t been home on the weekends much during the summer. Being away from home generally costs money, so I do believe it was a win for the budget, even though we did spend a little. I plan to have more no-spend weekends soon (with no exceptions next time!).
How do you save money on the weekends? Have you ever done a no-spend weekend (or week)?
Here are some tools that I use myself that you may find helpful:
Want to painlessly save more each month (without even lifting a finger!)? Try out Digit. I really thought I was saving all I possibly could. Digit proved me wrong. See my review and updates on how much I’ve saved here.
Personal Capital tracks your expenses for you for free! Have all your accounts in one place and utilize their free expense tracking tool! I use their free net worth and expense tracking tools. Sign up for a FREE Personal Capital account.
This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, at no additional cost to you, I’ll receive a commission if you buy products through these links. See the full disclosure here.
Are you ready to save some serious money each month? Take the challenge!
Amanda, this is a great idea! I need to think how I might serve this up to my kids to get them excited about it. Maybe, if I tell them that it will be fodder for a future post on my own site, perhaps I can get them on-board. Not that we ever spend too much on the weekends anyway, but to really make it a no-spend weekend will take some extra effort for sure.
This is good inspiration! And since you mentioned TKD, my son and I got our Orange belts in June and will be testing for our Green belts next month!
Thanks, Jon! I would definitely use it as a blog post so they are more willing – my kids usually just roll their eyes, but go along with it anyway. I would really like to do some “true” no-spend weekends soon too.
Congrats on the orange belts and good luck on testing for green! So glad to hear you guys are still in TKD – I think it’s the perfect family activity, but I’m biased. I am grateful not to have to test as often now, but we are up for 2nd degree in December, so I really need to get into a daily practice routine to get ready.
Amanda,
Another activity is to watch YouTube videos. They are free if you already pay a monthly fee for internet service.
Some of these ideas I’ve never even thought of. I will put them in my weekend rotation.
Thank you for the awesome post.
Great idea, Steven! My kids use YouTube as entertainment (and for learning) frequently. Thanks for bringing that up, as most people do have the internet service already. Plus, YouTube is great inspiration for things to do and learning a new skill!
And thanks for mentioning my Goal Worksheet in your post earlier this week! 🙂
Great ideas! Lately we have been doing a lot of picnics at different parks. It’s nice to enjoy lunch with a view.
Thanks! Picnics are great for getting out of the house and enjoying nature on a budget! We have a great park down the road from us that we enjoy.
This is an awesome list Amanda! My husband has been obsessed with finding the best games for family game night. We have a few new ones that they are providing a lot of opportunities for us to spend time together and really have some fun without spending money. (Er, except for buying the games)
Thanks, Linda! Love family game night! We move a table into the living room by the fireplace in the winter and play all day. You do have to buy the games, but if you consider the hours of entertainment they provide, it’s a bargain.
check your local library. Ours now lets you “Check out” games! so not only do we get books and DVDs, but now there are board games!
YAHOO!
Thanks, Jan! Great tip – use the library to check out games! What a super way to entertain yourself and your family for free!
Try Twister, good exercise, guarenteed fun, indoors or out. Card games, deck cheap, find game rules on internets, very handy indoors, outdoors, winter, summer. Tornado Shelter or hurricane shelter, power or not. Calming, passes time, centers people, and helps prevent hysteria and irritibilty. Bingo, concentration, fish Old maid. Search yard sales for games.
All great ideas, MaryAnn! We love games at our house. Even when the kids don’t want to play (they’re teenagers!), my husband and I play. We have collected some great ones over the years, but tend to play the classics more often – yahtzee is one of my all time favorites.
Many actionable items in here Amanda! Love the concept and think we can all benefit from it. Luckily I bought groceries yesterday so I accept this challenge!
Love the fact that you are playing Pokemon Go with your kids haha. I will basically be watching Olympics all weekend long and exercise around the area.
Thanks, Stefan! Glad you have enough groceries to get through the weekend 🙂 ! The Olympics will be great for free entertainment.
Love this! We tried to do Pokemon Go a couple weeks back, but I was the only one that was interested and the glare on the screen was making it impossible. That seriously might be what I choose to do if I ever get a spare moment to myself.
Thanks! The glare can be an issue. I hope you get to try it out again. What I find most interesting is the connection perfect strangers make when playing! It’s always fun to talk to new people.
You caught your first Pokemon, congratulations! I haven’t downloaded the app and I don’t think I will because I feel that I would get sucked into it if I start playing it.. I can’t practice discipline when it comes to re-playing my childhood game.
I haven’t ever done a no-spend week but it’s on my list of things to do. It’s getting increasingly harder because of all the social events that my coworkers host, to which I occasionally say yes to. Gotta have fun at least some of the times!
Thanks! I haven’t hunted any Pokemon since that weekend, but hopefully will go with the kids again soon!
If you have a hard time fitting in a no-spend weekend, maybe try Monday-Thursday sometime just to see how it works for you!?
I’ve done many of the activities on your list! I’m currently on a three year spending ban on outings with my hubby and friends (while I pay off massive student loan debt). People often think that’s crazy, but there actually are a lot of fun things that can be done for free!
That’s great! Three years is a long time, so I bet you’ve gotten very creative with free entertainment. And I completely agree with you that there are many fun things to do that are free! In fact, many of my favorite activities don’t cost a dime.
This a great, useful post! Although I’ll have to give it a go next weekend because we did some back to school shopping this weekend for our 4 kids (ouch!!). 🙂
Each weekend I try to find at least one thing in my closet, garage, attic, wherever that I can list on ebay. So far this year I’ve pocked about $600 from this – most from piecing out an old baseball card collection. Not bad.
Thanks, Ty! Good luck next weekend! Buying school supplies for four kids would really add up!
It’s interesting that you are selling baseball cards. We have a small box full of them that my husband hasn’t parted with yet. I’ll have to look into selling them on ebay. $600 for the year is great!
Great list! I’ve found the more you do free stuff, the more it becomes a normal part of what you do. This weekend, I’ve decluttered (that’s actually quite unusual for us), had a picnic in a park where I took photos (3 more off the list) and we managed to play board games not only on Friday night but also on Saturday night too 🙂 And that’s without thinking ‘what can I do that is free?’
I think culinary creations would be a good addition to the list, cakes and biscuits or at this time of year, iced lollies.
Thanks for sharing your weekend, Sarah! You did so much free stuff this weekend! Love that you played board games both evenings. You’re right, trying something new in the kitchen would be a great addition, and forces some creativity with food you have on hand too. Yes, I think the more you do it, the more it becomes enjoyable and just part of the routine. Summer weekends are more expensive for us, but the rest of the year, we have many no-spend weekends.
I feel our once-a-week grocery shopping schedule really lets us down here.. We always do our weekly food shop on Sunday! But changing that to Monday wouldn’t change the weekly spend ratio.. So let’s just pretend we do it on Mondays (It was after 6pm and dark this week.. so the “day” part of Sunday was definitely over :p ). Great list of suggestions though, it’s a really good idea to get out of the mentality of weekend spending, a huge step towards financial independence.
We must be pretty boring (or cheap) people because we rarely spend money on the weekend (except for that grocery shopping) This weekend we worked on our blog, watched a movie we’d recorded off free-to-air TV, enjoyed each others company whilst we pottered around the house, made home cooked meals and did a little weeding in the garden. If we want to get out of the house we often go for a drive to somewhere new and have a look at a great view, a new walking track.. or just go for a walk in our local area.
Jasmin
Grocery shopping on Sundays would definitely make it hard to do a no-spend weekend, but you could always modify it and do Friday and Saturday, but “pretending” to do it on Mondays works too! 😉 It sounds like you guys tend to do many free activities anyway, so I’m not sure this is much of a challenge for you (and that’s a good thing). And I don’t think your boring – we do many of the same activities you enjoyed over the weekend!
Hey Jasmin, My Gran has always told me that it takes a boring person to get bored! So you definitely don’t sound boring to me 🙂
Your garden sounds amazing! Homemade salsa is the best.
Thanks for another great, inspiring article.
Aww, thanks, Julie! I love the homemade salsa. You just can’t buy anything even close to it in the store.
For our No Spend Weekends we like go go Geocaching. It’s like a scavenger hunt, my daughter calls it Treasure Hunting. Go to geocache.com you can pay for a premium membership but we use the free membership and have no problems. You would be amazed at how many geocaches there are.
Hi Heather! I totally forgot about Geocaching! Thanks for adding this idea, as it’s a great family activity. We used to do this frequently on the weekends when the kids were younger. They loved finding what others had left and adding their own treasures to the cache.
I love that this list includes both fun and productive ideas! Some to dos and some just becauses. Love it! Will use it!
That’s great, Rae Lane! I love weekends with both to dos and just becauses (and I really like the way you put that!).
Amanda,
These are great suggestions! I’ve picked up some bad spending habits, including eating out too much, which I think are partly due to time constraints and also due to a subconscious fix I get from spending. I’m looking for ways to reduce wasteful spending. Selling stuff I don’t need and cooking more are easy ways for me to accomplish this.
Thanks, DS! It can be tough to keep spending in check when you have time constraints. It sounds like you’re on the right track. I love selling stuff for extra cash. I don’t always love cooking, but try to find quick, easy meals on the days when I don’t really want to do it!
My husband and I had a rare weekend without the kids and decided to make it a “no spend” one. We think your suggestion list is great and our activities included mountain hiking,
cooking meals with new recipes (inexpensive ones), watching a movie we borrowed from the library, building a fire in our fire pit while sipping hot chocolate and playing lots of cards! We had a blast for FREE (almost)!!! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing, Gloria! That sounds like the perfect low spend “date” weekend to me! (I dream of living closer to the mountains to hike.) 🙂
Great Ideas! Our family is gearing up for another no spending month in January. I will definitely use some of these ideas…and share this post with my blog readers! Thanks!!
Thanks, Sarah! And thanks so much for sharing!!! I’m getting ready for my no spend month too. Today I plan to organize the pantry so I’ll know what food I have on hand to use up.
Hi Amanda, the list is great and very thorough! We’re always fine tuning the budget and these ideas are great. Someone up the thread mentioned geocaching. We do something similar – letterboxing. You use printed directions (instead of a handheld device) to find the box. Everyone brings a pad and a personal ink stamp. When you find the box there is a stamp you can use to stamp your book. Then you stamp their book.
Thanks, Amanda! I love the idea of letterboxing! I had never heard of it before, but what a great form of entertainment! It’s like a treasure hunt. If you ever write a post on it, or if you have a great link to a resource on the topic, please feel free to share here!
This is so perfect. I’m in the middle of a no spend 14 day challenge right now and I’ve already cleaned the house a dozen times 🙂
Thanks Danae! Cleaning the house isn’t a bad thing, right!? I like to declutter and organize on my no spend challenges – and sell/donate what I find to get rid of. Good luck on the rest of your month!
I don’t do no spend days, or no spend periods of any kind, because I use a budget. If having a no spend period helps you save money than you should do it.
On your list of things to do on a no spend weekend, I noticed you had volunteer. I think helping out when you can is so important and rewarding for you and the people/organization you work with. Thank you for that.
Thanks, Douglas! I agree helping out other people or organizations is incredibly rewarding. I always walk away from volunteer experiences feeling great – I think it benefits me more than it does the ones I help. 🙂