Comments on: Money Management: Try a January No-Spend Month

By: EFX Moderator, EM

EFX Moderator, EM — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:10:51 +0000

Karin, A no-spend month is a great challenge, but shouldn’t keep you from paying your essential bills like rent and insurance. It’s fantastic that you can cut down your extra expenses to only $25/month. It’s a great opportunity to build up your savings and shift your budget to the essentials. Let us know how it goes and how your savings improves. Thanks for posting.

By: EFX Moderator, EM

EFX Moderator, EM — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:07:55 +0000

Aly, good points. Since bills like rent, utility bills and car payments still need to be paid on-time to stay on good terms with your lenders, they weren’t considered part of the No-Spend month. This is to cut out all of the “extras” in your budget, like eating out or shopping for extra clothes. These impulse purchases can really add up. Try going a month only spending money on the necessities and you could see a difference in your monthly budget. Thanks for posting.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:44:46 +0000

Other ways that help ease the transition are what we have called “No money Mondays”, where we do not spend anything AT all on Mondays. There are 52 of those crazy days in a year, so nearly two months of no spending. Once you get used to Mondays or Thrifty Thursdays where you make yourself dig out and defrost, you can go to one week a month of no spending. If you do that once a month, you will have actually not spent during three months of the year. Of course, you can’t not spend on Monday only to splurge on Tuesday or save for a week and binge the following week for this plan to work. The idea is to put a pause on the purchase. Frequently, if we forgo the impulse we will realize we can do without.

By: Karin

Karin — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:36:29 +0000

She also does not include
Rent, insurance, and bills,*Health expenses, *Work expenses, Savings and investments, Tithes and gifts

Which are all things We include in our no spend month.(except savings.. obviously all the money you are not spending goes to savings) for 2 people $500

if you don’t include them our No spend month is $25

* i don’t know what she means by this… We don’t have monthly health expenses we also don’t have work expenses.

She includes
Groceries & eating out,Gas, Clothing, Household items, Entertainment in the no spend.

And why doesn’t she include the phone bill. We pay just $30 a month for our phone (its a cellphone) but I know people (i.e. my sister) who pay more then $150 a month for one line.

I guess its a do what you will. But we plan to spend the bare minimum. We tend to do that anyway, but we’ve been a bit loose recently and a challenge like this could help us get back to where we where. ( i bought oreos yesterday… like a crazy person haha)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:14:29 +0000

*splurging ( i see other spelling errors too, eek)

By: Aly

Aly — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:13:54 +0000

$400 a month for 4 people is not a no spend month it’s slurging. I read that artical/blog before finding this one. Her family’s spending must have been way our of control. She doesn’t count rent/hydro/ect in the budget for no spend. so thats $400 for Food and entertainment. Which is just insane. We don’t even live all that frugally and spend openly. still topping out under $200 and food is included. Our no spend budget. ( not including rent, because everyone seems to be leaving that out) Is $100. For the month. ( oh i should mention, that will include books my husband buys for his studies. he wouldn’t agree to lay off for a month.)