A no-spend month is a month where you completely cut out certain line items from your budget. It could be your daily Starbucks run, Door Dash, clothes shopping, or literally anything. It is completely up to you what you want to focus on. A friend and I decided to cut out restaurants and shopping for “wants” (needs still allowed) for the month of July. This was my first time trying out a no spend month and it was definitely a learning experience. Here are my no spend July key takeaways:
Restaurants:
I started off with grand intentions for this experiment and for the most part I did okay. But the month was very long, and I quickly learned that completely cutting restaurants out for a whole month required me to tell my friends I couldn’t hang out a lot more than I wanted. I did end up getting two passes for the month to eat out with friends I hadn’t seen in a long while.
One thing I did that worked really well was to invite one of my friends over to my house to cook for her. It was lovely and I got extra time with her compared to if we had met at a restaurant. I also find restaurants to be overstimulating sometimes, so the lack of noise and crowds was a plus for me as well. If I were to do this again, I think I would give my friends a heads-up ahead of time and let them know that I would still love to have them over to my house instead of going out to restaurants.
The other challenge was that not being able to go to a restaurant at lunchtime tempted me to not take a lunch break at all. To combat this, I went home for my lunch break several times and I left the office to run errands or to just step out for fresh air. Truthfully, I did also eat lunch at my desk several times throughout the month but probably not more than I usually do.
Restaurant Total for July- 64.46. Not too bad!
Shopping:
I will admit it- I am an Amazon shopper. I have gotten into the habit of seeing something, immediately deciding that I need it, and proceeding to buy it on Amazon (all happening within about 15 minutes). This is why I knew shopping needed to be part of my no-spend July challenge. I started out going through my Amazon purchase history and running through whether each item was a “want” or a “need”. I found that several items I bought over the last several months had been “wants” or impulse buys of things that I did need but probably could have shopped around for. With this self-reflection in mind, I started the month out. And I think I might have bombed this one.
Here's the breakdown of what I bought:
- July 2: Zevo Flying Insect Traps for $29.14- I would like to make the argument that I did actually need these to help with fruit flies in my kitchen brought in by a house plant that I had left outside. I might have been able to get a better deal.
- July 15: Ollie’s shopping for $52.58- coffee and personal care items. Feels like it could have gone in groceries instead of shopping! And everything was a stupid great deal. I stick by this one.
- July 15: Target for $37.76- shampoo, conditioner and book. The book I could have done without.
- July 15: SC state parks for $3.75- This was for a souvenir. Definitely not a need.
- July 16: Ramsey Solutions for $16.20- Books again… not a need. But it was half off and a great deal.
- July 17: Dollar Tree for $4.87- Birthday cards for my nieces and nephews. No regrets.
- July 28: Wal Mart for $74.52- Microwave for my office. Could I walk to the communal microwave? Yes. But it was such a great deal.
Shopping Total for July- $187.32. Told you I bombed it.
What I learned:
The no-spend July really helped me learn a lot about myself and my shopping habits. I realized that there are two things that I have to work on when it comes to how I spend money on shopping. First, I have trouble with impulse buys. Instead of buying something as soon as I think about it, I should wait- slow down- sleep on it- shop around. The second thing is that I have a really hard time passing up a good deal. If it is something that I want and it is on sale, I really struggle telling myself to wait or not to get it. It feels like I am saving money, not spending money. But what I have to remind myself is that I save 100% of the money I don’t spend. Now THAT’S a good deal.
Doing this with a friend or accountability partner is crucial. You are going to need someone to help hold you accountable and encourage you along the way. And if you’re wondering how my friend did, you’re in luck! She cut her average total spending from the previous two months (May and June) by well over half! Her previous two-month average for restaurants was $547 per month and during the no-spend July she spent only $121. Her previous average for shopping was $905 and she decreased that to only $64. She crushed it!
Overall, I highly recommend no spend months. The month will seem incredibly long, but I do not recommend shortening the timeframe. Try it out for a month on something that you constantly go over budget on. I can guarantee you will learn something about yourself in the process and you might even save some money!
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Wow! I’m not sure I could do so well. I don’t eat out a lot. But the Amazon shopping…I could definitely improve on that.