Have you ever heard of a "No Spend" month? We thought it would be fun to take on this challenge as we work to pay off our mortgage as quickly as possible. Yesterday was the last day of our challenge, and we wanted to recap on how it went for us!
The Hardest Part:
My hardest part? Shopping for Lorelai. I have the most irrational set of "needs" for our daughter, and as a clearance shopper it is SO HARD for me to pass up a bargain on something. I went to the outlet mall once with my sister this month, and it was IMPOSSIBLE for me not to buy things. She laughed at me as I walked around Old Navy with a pile of $1-$2 shirts and dresses for Lorelai I found on clearance, and 15 minutes later she found me slowly putting everything back. It just about killed me. Through this experience, we learned I need to have a budget for what I can spend on Lorelai. This girl has plenty of clothes and everything else...and she certainly doesn't care what she is dressed in.
My second hardest part? Online shopping. It is second nature for me. I'm an online shopping addict. From our basic necessities like food and toiletries, to DIY projects, baby items, shoes (oh, the shoes) and gifts. On average, I order 4 things from amazon EVERY WEEK out of the year. Let alone my online grocery shopping habit that has become even worse with the Walmart grocery app I use every single day to add to our growing grocery list. Add on my love of Target, Facebook Marketplace and Ebay...and you have yourself a full blown addict. The first 2 weeks were hard to get out of the habit, but after that I rarely ever caught myself browsing.
Things We Learned:
I had a ton of free time this month. January is a VERY slow month for photography. It was a little hard to differentiate between all the free time I had...was it from a lack of photography clients or from a lack of the need to shop or perhaps because I was done with my MBA program? I had maybe 2-4 clients a week (compared to often 5-10) so that was part of my downtime. I do think I was more present at home, as I shop online more than I care to admit, its just second nature!
We have SO MUCH LESS TRASH when we aren't shopping. Each week we have lived at the new house, we have had an overflowing trashcan...and then each week this month it was only half full. The first week I thought it was a fluke...and then it continued each week. It made me very aware of all the extra "stuff" I get with my shopping ventures (boxes, packing materials, etc.) We were even able to skip a trash pickup because our trash can wasn't that full.
We need a budget. I've been very anti-budget for the last 5 years. We have never budgeted, our philosophy has been we use the system of comparisons. Would I rather have this movie, or that dress, or put the money towards our debt? It worked really well for us when we were paying down our student loans, as we went straight from poor college students to poor newlyweds. Although we have more income from better jobs, we have spent 3 years now living without our student loans (1 year of which we had no debt at all, until we got a mortgage) and we aren't near as disciplined as we once were. We would like to try budgeting now.
I expected I would have made a lot of lists of things to buy later....and then come February 1st I would go out and dominate the stores. I actually didn't make any lists which surprised me. Today I really don't have anything I need to go out and get because I put it off for a month. If I need to get things later on down the road, I figure not having it will be a reminder itself. Which will probably help me decide if I really NEEDED an item or not. I didn't shop online once, and we got through the month just fine, so it has really made me question the need for amazon prime. We will be revising whether we continue prime at our annual renewal this spring.
We can do a lot of entertaining things without spending money. From the memberships we have (Zoo and Botanical Gardens) to the libraries and streaming services we have (we get hulu for free through spotify, we have amazon with our prime account, and we pay for Netflix....we have not had cable in 5 years as we use an old fashioned antenna to get our basic channels) it is easy to stay "entertained". If we did this during the warmer months, I think we would really enjoy all the free events Omaha has to offer. This time of year there is the Joslyn Art Museum which is free, but we especially love the concerts outdoors and a stroll through the farmers market. This month we found free events at the local nursery and we found a new art museum we didn't know existed! We made fun at home too, like drawing with Lorelai, hanging out with friends, and dinner together with my sister and her family.
What would we have done differently?
We had a meal prep class scheduled already, which prepared 6 freezer meals and 3 sides. It was paid for prior to the month starting, but I would have held off doing that as a way to encourage us to use the food we had.We didn't get into our pantry items quite as much as I had hoped, although it certainly did help.
We didn't stay as close to the food budget as I had hoped. We had budgeted $50 for groceries, but I didn't do enough planning to stretch that as far as I would like. We've been dealing with what to feed Lorelai too, as she has becoming increasingly picky and we dropped the bottle early in the month...those changes made it difficult for us to stick to that budget on food.
I had to book a lot of travel this month (as Kevin will be traveling with me on work trips this spring) and although some is reimbursable through work, its a slow process so it deflated our actual "savings" from our no-spend month. We will see the effects of it in February as well. There is no question we are able to put more towards our mortgage as a result of this month, but we expected to see the result of that in January rather than the month of February.
Was it successful?
Yes! Not in the way I expected though. I expected we would have a large chunk of cash ready to pay towards our mortgage....and then I would go back to my old ways. We did have extra money to pay towards the mortgage (yay!) but I think it was more of a cleanse. It refreshed our minds, gave us lots of family time, allowed me to see what life would be like if I wasn't a shopping addict. It gave us more opportunities to talk about money together, to realize we need a budget...and to start the new year off right!
As a result of our no spend month, coupled with a book I've been reading on intentional living...I'm also doing a huge cleanse of our "stuff" (primarily my clothes). I truly believe that if I only hang on to the clothes I love, I will have more time (not digging through clothes that are so-so) and it will help me when I am out shopping in the future, only buying things I really LOVE, not just that are on sale. This month was truly a mind-cleanse.
Also I truly believe that my first ever "successful" omelet that I prepared this morning was as a direct result of our "No-Spend" Month. Why? Because I cooked more this month and became a bit more familiar with some basic techniques I never learned prior. So yes...this omelet I'm currently enjoying is proof of success enough for me! No more scrambled eggs!
The Hardest Part:
My hardest part? Shopping for Lorelai. I have the most irrational set of "needs" for our daughter, and as a clearance shopper it is SO HARD for me to pass up a bargain on something. I went to the outlet mall once with my sister this month, and it was IMPOSSIBLE for me not to buy things. She laughed at me as I walked around Old Navy with a pile of $1-$2 shirts and dresses for Lorelai I found on clearance, and 15 minutes later she found me slowly putting everything back. It just about killed me. Through this experience, we learned I need to have a budget for what I can spend on Lorelai. This girl has plenty of clothes and everything else...and she certainly doesn't care what she is dressed in.
My second hardest part? Online shopping. It is second nature for me. I'm an online shopping addict. From our basic necessities like food and toiletries, to DIY projects, baby items, shoes (oh, the shoes) and gifts. On average, I order 4 things from amazon EVERY WEEK out of the year. Let alone my online grocery shopping habit that has become even worse with the Walmart grocery app I use every single day to add to our growing grocery list. Add on my love of Target, Facebook Marketplace and Ebay...and you have yourself a full blown addict. The first 2 weeks were hard to get out of the habit, but after that I rarely ever caught myself browsing.
Things We Learned:
I had a ton of free time this month. January is a VERY slow month for photography. It was a little hard to differentiate between all the free time I had...was it from a lack of photography clients or from a lack of the need to shop or perhaps because I was done with my MBA program? I had maybe 2-4 clients a week (compared to often 5-10) so that was part of my downtime. I do think I was more present at home, as I shop online more than I care to admit, its just second nature!
We have SO MUCH LESS TRASH when we aren't shopping. Each week we have lived at the new house, we have had an overflowing trashcan...and then each week this month it was only half full. The first week I thought it was a fluke...and then it continued each week. It made me very aware of all the extra "stuff" I get with my shopping ventures (boxes, packing materials, etc.) We were even able to skip a trash pickup because our trash can wasn't that full.
We need a budget. I've been very anti-budget for the last 5 years. We have never budgeted, our philosophy has been we use the system of comparisons. Would I rather have this movie, or that dress, or put the money towards our debt? It worked really well for us when we were paying down our student loans, as we went straight from poor college students to poor newlyweds. Although we have more income from better jobs, we have spent 3 years now living without our student loans (1 year of which we had no debt at all, until we got a mortgage) and we aren't near as disciplined as we once were. We would like to try budgeting now.
I expected I would have made a lot of lists of things to buy later....and then come February 1st I would go out and dominate the stores. I actually didn't make any lists which surprised me. Today I really don't have anything I need to go out and get because I put it off for a month. If I need to get things later on down the road, I figure not having it will be a reminder itself. Which will probably help me decide if I really NEEDED an item or not. I didn't shop online once, and we got through the month just fine, so it has really made me question the need for amazon prime. We will be revising whether we continue prime at our annual renewal this spring.
We can do a lot of entertaining things without spending money. From the memberships we have (Zoo and Botanical Gardens) to the libraries and streaming services we have (we get hulu for free through spotify, we have amazon with our prime account, and we pay for Netflix....we have not had cable in 5 years as we use an old fashioned antenna to get our basic channels) it is easy to stay "entertained". If we did this during the warmer months, I think we would really enjoy all the free events Omaha has to offer. This time of year there is the Joslyn Art Museum which is free, but we especially love the concerts outdoors and a stroll through the farmers market. This month we found free events at the local nursery and we found a new art museum we didn't know existed! We made fun at home too, like drawing with Lorelai, hanging out with friends, and dinner together with my sister and her family.
What would we have done differently?
We had a meal prep class scheduled already, which prepared 6 freezer meals and 3 sides. It was paid for prior to the month starting, but I would have held off doing that as a way to encourage us to use the food we had.We didn't get into our pantry items quite as much as I had hoped, although it certainly did help.
We didn't stay as close to the food budget as I had hoped. We had budgeted $50 for groceries, but I didn't do enough planning to stretch that as far as I would like. We've been dealing with what to feed Lorelai too, as she has becoming increasingly picky and we dropped the bottle early in the month...those changes made it difficult for us to stick to that budget on food.
I had to book a lot of travel this month (as Kevin will be traveling with me on work trips this spring) and although some is reimbursable through work, its a slow process so it deflated our actual "savings" from our no-spend month. We will see the effects of it in February as well. There is no question we are able to put more towards our mortgage as a result of this month, but we expected to see the result of that in January rather than the month of February.
Was it successful?
Yes! Not in the way I expected though. I expected we would have a large chunk of cash ready to pay towards our mortgage....and then I would go back to my old ways. We did have extra money to pay towards the mortgage (yay!) but I think it was more of a cleanse. It refreshed our minds, gave us lots of family time, allowed me to see what life would be like if I wasn't a shopping addict. It gave us more opportunities to talk about money together, to realize we need a budget...and to start the new year off right!
As a result of our no spend month, coupled with a book I've been reading on intentional living...I'm also doing a huge cleanse of our "stuff" (primarily my clothes). I truly believe that if I only hang on to the clothes I love, I will have more time (not digging through clothes that are so-so) and it will help me when I am out shopping in the future, only buying things I really LOVE, not just that are on sale. This month was truly a mind-cleanse.
Also I truly believe that my first ever "successful" omelet that I prepared this morning was as a direct result of our "No-Spend" Month. Why? Because I cooked more this month and became a bit more familiar with some basic techniques I never learned prior. So yes...this omelet I'm currently enjoying is proof of success enough for me! No more scrambled eggs!
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