Every September for the last 5 or 6 years, our family has done a spending fast. We call it No Spend September.
We do this for multiple reasons: to get a hold on our out-of-control spending, to be mindful of our spending, to save money (or to have more money for home renovations), and to slow life down in general.
We are planning on doing it again this year. Lots of people/families do no spend days, weeks, and months and for each family the rules are different. Here are ours.
First of all, we pay all normally scheduled bills, obviously. We also still buy groceries and gas.
Our normal grocery budget for the month is $500. For September, we try to bring it down to $400. We don't "stock up" on things we might need and we don't buy extras. If we go out to eat during the month, which we rarely do, the money comes out of grocery budget. The most important thing we can do for our food budget during the month is plan, plan, plan! I plan our meals for the month and grocery shop accordingly. Because meat is expensive, we try to shop our freezer first to see what we could get from there before we do any shopping. We also look for any meals we might have frozen in the freezer. Both of these small tips help keep our grocery bill down. Just of the top of my head, I already know we have 3 or 4 packages of pork in the freezer (that don't already have a purpose) and 2 or 3 packages of ground turkey. We also have chicken, pancetta (we use this for a specific family favorite), and a couple breakfast sausages. Besides meat, I know we have the fixings for at least one breakfast fritata and probably another meal or two frozen in the freezer. Without going to the grocery store, we have the fixings for probably close to 15, or a half a months worth, of meals. Not only does No Spend September make us conscious of our spending, but it helps us to be less wasteful with our food.
As far as gas goes, The Husband commutes for work. He has to get there. Period. I live and work in the same town and because we highly curtail our spending during the month, my gas does last longer in September, but I still fill up as needed. In a normal month, we budget $600 for gas; Septermber is no different. However, we tend to have more excess gas money at the end of each pay period. That money will continue to fund our car repair envelope.
No Spend September really gives us a reset when it comes to our spending. It causes us to think about what we are buying and why we are buying it. It also forces us to take a hard look at our spending and see where we have let it get out of control. And for us, No Spend September is a family venture. We are all, all in! That means no Starucks, no eating out, no new clothes or shoes, no buying lunch at school, no haircuts, no... I think you get the picture.
There are exceptions to the rule. If money is required for something at school, we send it in. If The Boy's football cleats broke in half in the middle of practice, we would replace them. But both of those things are the exceptiong, not the rule!
Any money "saved" over the course of No Spend September will be added to our debt pay-off. As you'll see in a future post, I'm making a stretch goal to get our credit card debt below $8000 by September's debt progress report so every little bit helps!
Have you ever attempted a spending fast?
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