Can you believe there are just two weeks left of August? Me neither!
In the two weeks left in August, I’ve decided to plan for a No-Spend September! It’s nice to have a couple weeks notice before a no-spend month to get mentally and physically prepared. All within budget, of course!
I actually haven’t done our big grocery shopping trip yet this month. We go to Sam’s Club and Winco which are an hour away and we just haven’t worked it into our schedule yet this month. We will though, especially now that we are preparing for another no-spend month.
Why We’re Doing a No-Spend Month in September
In our budget update in two weeks, I’ll give all the details, but for now, it looks like our income in August (which we will budget and spend in September) is going to be higher than it has ever been! Wahoo!
So why, you might ask, does this make me want to do a no-spend month?
With a higher income, it would be easy to relax a little on our debt payoff. We don’t want to be tempted buy extras and be frivolous. We want to make September our highest debt payoff month ever, so we are stretching ourselves.
Also, it has been a while since our last no-spend month in April 2014, so we are due for a no-spend month. It can be a fun challenge if you let it be!
No-Spend Month Rules
I often have people ask me what the rules are for a no-spend month or if they can do this or that during a no-spend month. This is what I tell them:
Rule #1: Set your own rules.
Rule #2: Follow the rules you set.
Seriously. You will get the most out of a no-spend month if you set your own rules.
Some people will want to only give up non-grocery shopping. Others will make exceptions for produce. If you already know you have a birthday party coming up, you might make a special exception for buying a gift. If you have a tendency to eat out often, having a restaurant no-spend month would be a perfect challenge!
Set rules that will challenge you, but that will still be doable. Set yourself up for success. Don’t compare your rules to others’ rules.
Because I’m all about public accountability, I will tell you our rules.
- No grocery shopping
- No eating out (this is easy because we rarely eat out)
- No spending money on entertainment or gifts
- No buying household goods or toiletries
- We can still buy gas
- We still pay all of our normal monthly bills (of course!)
Prep Time
We still have two weeks left to prepare using the funds left in our August budget.
Another rule of mine is that all preparation for a no-spend month must be done within the normal budget constraints of the month before your no-spend month. By the same token, the normal budget must be kept for the month after the no-spend month. This ensures that a no-spend month really does save you money.
With the money we have in this month’s grocery budget, I plan to stock up on milk, cheese, tortillas, eggs, apples, bananas, and some other staples which I can’t think of at the moment. We also need to stock up on toothpaste. Random fact: My family is ridiculously picky about toothpaste. We often have five different tubes going at once. #pickyourbattles
If you need toilet paper or other household necessities, stock up on them too. One of the advantages of a no-spend month is that you stay out of the store, which saves time, gas, and money that you’d spend on impulse purchases. Get whatever you can before the no-spend month starts so that you can have the most success possible.
Encouragement and Support
In addition to my normal Monday, Wednesday, Friday blogging schedule, I will be posting on Tuesday and Thursday throughout September as well!
On Tuesdays I”ll have a weekly check-in where you can leave a comment to share how you are doing on the no-spend challenge. I will have a link-up for any bloggers or instagrammers to link up a post/pic of their progress on the challenge. On Thursdays I will share some other no-spend inspiration! Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be the normal Six Figures Under mix.
Are you in?
Who is ready to make September an awesome month for goal progress (savings, debt payoff, etc) by not spending anything (or whatever you decide your personal challenge will be)?
You’ve still got some time to think about it and talk to your spouse or family. Remember even if your other half is not game, you can still make your own goal and changes for the month. What will you choose not to spend money on?
Tell us what your plan is in the comments!
This is SO great. So, funny story, I decided to do a No Spend Month starting this January (roughly two weeks away) and then I was looking at your blog (after writing a post about mine) and noticed that you DID one already AND you have very similar rules to us. I love how you describe the rules. I also love that you provide link ups for other bloggers. I will definitely be reading your posts about it and how it went for you as I start to prepare for mine. If you are willing, I’d love it if you could check mine out:
http://diyjahn.com/frugal-living-at-its-finest-the-no-spend-challenge/
I want to do one for February. I would love to learn from you!
With some anxiety, I’m in!
No eating out
No buying clothing, household goods, or toiletries.
$25 for entertainment.
No buying food except for using $25 gift card to the grocery store (reward for frequent shopping) and $2.95 in bottle return receipts.
Exceptions: raspberries are just coming into season here. I usually pick and freeze them so I’m allocating $$ for that.
My goal is to save enough to cover: car repair, filling the heating oil tank, pay for furnace cleaning, pay for radon water tank to be exchanged. I think all of this adds up to $1200.
I read this post earlier this morning and didn’t really consider joining in but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. I’ve decided I will be joining in, kinda. Mine is going to be a little different as it strictly pertains to food, a mix of nixing eating out as well as eating what we already have on hand.
We are going to only buy gas and groceries, except for the weekend that we are going to be in Louisville, KY
Love this idea! I need to start planning our rules but I think I’ll probably plan on only buying very basic weekly groceries like produce and meat. Fast food will be hard to give up but if we could make it an entire month without fast food that would be awesome! I might include one or two exceptions if we get invites from family or friends since those don’t happen more than once every month or two, and it would still be much less than our current spending.
I just found your site and I’m loving it! And more than that, finding this post today was perfect for me. I decided to join you in your no-spend September, much to my boyfriend’s dismay, but I need to build my savings back up and I think this will be a great start. It’s my birthday next month too, so it’ll be a fun challenge finding things we can do for free (and looking at my savings at the end of the month will be my birthday gift to myself :] ). I live right next to a grocery store so I will continue to buy groceries during the month, but I think I’ll still try to limit the number of trips I make. The only thing I’m worried about is if friends call up wanting to go out, I usually have so little time for being social that I’ll take any opportunity that fits my schedule. Perhaps I’ll give myself a $10 limit for if something arises. Anyways, I’m excited to do this now, thanks for the great article!
There are so many birthday freebies! Mine was in June and I googled it- I got free coffee, free entrees and some full size products from my favorite stores- check it out! It was fun going all over town collecting my “presents” with my husband.
Fabulous idea!
Sounds like a plan! I’m in too. August has been great – I even found someone to carpool with for my out of town job, so I want to keep on going! I also just started YNAB too. Thanks for the ideas!
I’m so excited to see this. Last week I encouraged friends to do a no spend month with me and we’ve been each figuring out our goals and boudries. I’ll put this link on our Facebook group for encouragement. Yay:)
This is such perfect timing!! I *think* and I’ll have to put some more thought it but I think I’m going to just buy gas. The only exception is I’m getting a 250 prepaid visa which I had planned to buy work clothes with, since I’ve recently started a new job and am pretty limited on clothes. Hopefully though I can use that gift card for both clothes and gas! I know it sounds frivolous to potentially spend so much on clothes, but that’s something I care about a lot so I make it a priority.
I’m in. This will be our family’s fourth annual no-spend September. Our rules are a little different. We allot
$400 for groceries for the month (I don’t stock up) and we still buy gas and, like you, of course pay our regular bills. That is the only money we try to spend. If we are given any gift cards throughout the year, we save them for September and will, therefor, use gift cards.
If one of our kids is invited to a birthday party, we will buy a gift for that, but otherwise, we try to plan ahead and make sure all gifts are bought ahead of time.
The only other thing we have always bought during our no-spend September is school pictures. They always come around in September and that is not a purchase we are willing to forgo. As a family, we decided our no-spend month needs to work for us and our lifestyle. As I’m sure you will, we involve our kids in the whole process. As a treat, they get to each (I have 2) buy lunch once a week, but as a participating member of our family, they give that up too during the month of September! It’s been such a great experience for us!
I’ll be participating! My rules are:
1. No eating out
2. No impulse purchases
Ooooooooh! We have been doing a no spend month here this month! We’ve been trying to stock up on food storage and save more, so no spend it is! This month’s rules have been to just buy the “perimeter” foods at the grocery store (produce, milk, etc), and pay bills, etc. No money for fun. And with a 10 year anniversary this month (yours is too, right?) we’ve had to get creative, but it’s been fun! We’ve even gotten freebies for our fun outings!
I like the idea of a perimeter only month! I hadn’t thought of that. Great tip.
I love the “perimeter” month at the grocery store. I think that is what I will do for our groceries this month. Also I am in with NO buying of books, CDs etc which is a big downfall of mine. And no new clothing. No Starbucks (or Starbucks substitute).
I’m in! I’m going to go with a “no unplanned spending month” with school starting here in Canada the second week of September we will have school supply fees and feildtrip notices and such. But we will be cutting out all unplanned expenses.
I don’t know how I am going to do this yet but I want to at least really make some meaningful changes this month. Maybe, for sure not eating out and try to use up some things in our freezer rather than buying more. I never thought I would be excited about restricting myself but I am. I’m somehow gonna make this work. Thanks so much for the great ideas!
I have started thinking about a no-spend month as well but September doesn’t work well for us. With my teacher husband going back to school and my birthday, we need to do a different time. I think October it is. I’ll use all the encouragement in September to keep me motivated about doing it in October!
i am in. I was already thinking of doing this in September, so very glad to see this. I have never done a no spend month before so will have to put more thought into it. We are in the midst of a home remodel, and I feel like we are bleeding money. However, September will be a break in the remodel as we wait for contractor availability, so I think will be a good time for this.