The first hurdle in my No Spend Month Challenge was brought to my attention at 1:00 am on January 1 (it was New Year’s Eve + I have teens = I was awake). My daughter was thinking about an upcoming school project and remembered she needed a bi-fold presentation board. This didn’t make my mental checklist when I was preparing for the month.
The next day, I remembered that I kept many of the presentation boards from past projects and maybe, just maybe, she could reuse one. Most of the boards were unusable due to the copious amount of glue used, but one had scotch tape, so I was able to remove the previous project with little damage to the board. My daughter is a good sport and said she could work with the blue board. No shopping, no money spent. Win-win!
Alan did end up spending a small amount of money at the home improvement store. We’re planning to finish the rest of our basement by adding a bathroom and bedroom/office. As avid DIYers, we plan to do it ourselves, of course (and slowly this time – to save money and sanity). This week, he noticed a sale for electrical supplies with an additional 15% off. We’ve been saving our rebates from this particular store to make a purchase for the basement project. He thought he could make the purchase with our rebate certificates at no cost to us. He was wrong. The certificates did cover most of the cost (total was $152.18). He spent $8.60. I decided to let it go. 🙂
Food wasn’t an issue this week. We had leftovers from the previous week, plus we were still stocked up from December. One thing I did notice is nothing, and I mean nothing, went to waste this week. This is a great side benefit of the no spend month and something I’d like to continue beyond this month.
Here’s what we ate for dinner, not including veggies and fruit (lunches were leftovers + fruit/veggie):
- Leftover pulled pork (this lasted for 3 days!)
- Pork Sausage Casserole (from my favorite cookbook, More-With-Less Cookbook
)
- Chili
- Breakfast (omelets)
- Korean Beef and Rice
- Pizza (take-out, purchased by my parents for a family birthday)
)I admit, I had a hard time looking at the grocery store flyers without scoping out all the sales. I swear, I was just looking through the ads to see what produce was on sale. I couldn’t help but glance at the loss leaders. Don’t worry, I restrained myself.
Food purchased:
What about entertainment, you ask? There wasn’t much excitement in this category, which really isn’t all that unusual. Each kid was sick for a for a couple of days, plus we naturally spend a lot of time at home. Here’s what we did:
- Took down holiday decorations
- Watched football
- Played games (we played video games with the kids, plus Alan and I played cards a few nights)
- Tae Kwon Do class
- Watched movies on Netflix. One was Minimalism: A Documentary on the Important Things, which I highly recommend)
- Celebrated a family birthday
- Looked at a potential rental property
Total Spent
$8.60
Exceptions
Food: $23.77 (just the produce!)
Gas: $71.16 (both tanks needed filled and we didn’t fill up before the end of December)
Birthday: $20
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You did a great job! Kudos on using the rebates at Menards, on no food waste and on re-using the posterboard! We’ve done well so far, well under our usual spending amounts. We did spend $5 on entertainment as my mom took us out to lunch and I wanted to cover the tip (it was a buffet, so we only do 10% for those). We also spent $26.50 on a new garage door opener for me (our old one broke and was unrepairable). Maybe not a necessity, but we’ve been going without for years and it was time to buck up and make the spend. All said and done though, we’re on track to have our lowest spending month in two years!!!
Thanks, Laurie! And a couple of days after Alan bought the stuff at Menards, we received a $75 rebate in the mail, so if we had only waited a few days, it would have been free!
Congrats on your very low spending! The lowest spending month in two years!? That’s fantastic. 🙂 I will look back at my expenditures to compare as well, but I’m sure it will be the same on my end. So far, I’m love how the challenge is making me think about spending!
Looking good, Amanda! We have a few things to confess on our post Monday, but at least for now we’re more or less on track. Our real challenge will come in a couple of weeks when we start running out of cheezits, pretzels, and ice cream.
Thanks, Emily! Looking forward to Monday’s post! Glad you’re on track now – I don’t think any of us can expect the month to be perfect. But, I love how it makes us really think harder about all spending. And even if we get off track one day, or even one week, getting back to it will still make a huge difference.
I know the month is going to get harder and harder for us too…as the food dwindles! I plan to bake cookies. I used to bake homemade crackers, but I remember them being time consuming, so we may just go without the crackers. It’s definitely going to require some creativity!
That Korean beef recipe sounds awesome. I can’t wait to spend more time attempting to cook when I do hit FI. Do you have a special recipe for the pulled pork? 3 days of leftovers is pretty awesome.
The Korean Beef is cheap, fast and tasty! The kids eat it every time. I’m famous for not using recipes, though I use the Korean Beef recipe every time. For the pulled pork, just buy a pork roast (we used pork butt) and stick it in the slow cooker for 8 hours on low (or until it’s tender). You may need to take out some of the liquid and fat (try to keep some liquid), and then use a fork to shred the meat and add bbq sauce (season to taste).
Great job! Although I am not doing the No Spend Month Challenge ( I don’t consider myself to be that good yet) I am working to control the amount of money I am spending on food. Food is my weakness, so I have developed a meal plan and so far so good! Keep it up.
Thanks, Dyana! Food spending is one of the fastest ways to trim the budget, in my opinion, and meal planning is a fantastic way to get it done. Let me know how it’s going!
Nice work Amanda, I look forward to seeing the meals get even more creative as the month progresses! As for me, I’m proud to say I haven’t spent a penny yet on my personal no-spend month. My spending freeze isn’t as extensive as yours though, as I’m not including groceries or essentials. So we did get a full load of groceries this week, and filled the car with gas. I also had my son’s hockey skates sharpened for $5. Looking forward to your next update!
Thanks, MMM! Congrats on a successful first week! Even though you aren’t including some things, groceries, gas and skates sharpened doesn’t sound like much spending at all.
My meals might consist of cereal and apples by the end of the month. (JK – we do have a deep freeze with bread, meat and some veggies.)
I always enjoyed Menards from when we lived South Dakota and their various rebates. There are a couple house projects we want to do as well but are saving up for them instead of putting them on the credit card and paying from our savings as we had a rather expensive water leak last month and need to buy a chainsaw this month to start cutting firewood.
Great job being able to reuse the presentation boards. It seems that manufacturers do a great job at ensuring their products can only be used once, so it’s always a small victory when something can be repurposed.
Thanks, Josh! The presentation board felt like a big win this week!
Menards is one of the only actual stores, besides the grocery store, that we shop at. But it’s the one place we really have to be intentional and keep our spending in check. We have a thing for DIY and home improvement projects, so we’re trying to be very careful about this next one. The timeline is over a year, so we can spread out costs and not stress about getting it done.
Wow your ability to find and re-use a poster board shows your commitment to this challenge! I also can relate to this -> “As avid DIYers, we plan to do it ourselves, of course (and slowly this time – to save money and sanity).” I tried to do our massive retaining wall WAY TOO QUICKLY and it drove me crazy. I’m going to redo all the doors, trim, and flooring in our house but I’m giving myself a solid 9-24 month time range to make sure that I don’t go crazy haha.
We usually go all in on the DIY projects. I know how the retaining wall must have felt. We built a patio, path and fire pit out of pavers in about a week. My back was killing me on day 2. I plan to be more realistic about the timeline on these projects from now on. We’ll see how that goes.
I love the idea Amanda and you did a great job spending so little. We’d fail pretty badly at that I think right now, but we will be supporting you with it along the way!
Tristan
Thanks, Tristan! I appreciate the support!
Love hearing about your challenge progress! That’s an amazing job with the home improvement supplies discount. You should be on one of those coupon shows!
Thanks! Funny thing is, I don’t use coupons anywhere else. But, Menards is one of the only stores we shop at besides the grocery stores and the rebates are pretty substantial, so it does offer some great savings.
You are kicking ass at this, and a third of the month is done! Good job saving your challenge from it’s first potential failure an hour into the month.
Thanks, Mrs. BITA! 🙂 Not kicking ass nearly as much in week #2…though still doing pretty good on the food end of things.