No Spend Month: My Guidelines and Goals

I will admit that I am not always the most mindful with my spending. If I see something online I want, I generally buy it. If I don’t feel like cooking one night, Aaron and I order in. You get the point, right?

I decided to challenge myself with a no-spend month in August. The goal of this month is to help break the bad habit of thoughtlessly spending on things I don’t need and to increase my savings. I don’t have a specific savings goal because I don’t want to put added pressure on this month, I just want to get a grasp of how much money I can save if I only buy things I actually need.

I have done some research on no-spend weeks and months and created some guidelines for myself to follow this month.

Things I will still spend money on in August:

  • Rent
  • Utilities
  • Phone/Internet
  • Car payment
  • Groceries (Including Home Chef)
  • Gas for the car (which I almost never need because I walk everywhere)
  • I am also going to set aside a specific amount for lunches each week (more on this later)

Things I will NOT spend money on in August:

  • Activities (only free activities for us this month)
  • Clothes
  • Eating out (except for budgeted meals)
  • Hair/Nails
  • Shopping

My guidelines and process going into this month:

  1. Make a goal: I have already done this. My goal is a no-spend month.
  2. Set Rules: I have done this by laying out what I will and will not spend money on.
  3. Talk about rules with Aaron: We have talked about this briefly and he is going to do it with me. He will set his own guidelines and rules that work for him. What I didn’t want to happen is for him to spend extra because I’m not buying.
  4. Put away credit cards to avoid temptation. I will carry my debit card and one credit card with me in case of emergencies (think blown tire or gas).

I have some areas of concern going into this. One of which is lunch. I eat out a lot for lunch. I bring leftovers for lunch when I have them, but because we use Home Chef for dinner we don’t have leftovers often. I have never really bought “lunch food” while grocery shopping, so I am going to work on that this week. I will probably buy pre-made salads from Trader Joes most of the time. They are under $5 and filling. I will allow myself to purchase lunch one or two times per week though, I will just try to spend less.

Another area I have to pay special attention to is dinner, and I may just budget for one dinner out per week. Is it really realistic to cook for 30 days straight? The answers is yes it is, but I am trying to be realistic. If I buy two dinners this month and Aaron buys two that is still less than usual.

I will admit that I purchase coffee for Aaron and me every single morning from Starbucks. We will have to stop doing that this month. We both order a Grande Blonde Roast each morning and it costs $4.90 per day. We do have a coffee machine at work, but it is terrible. I will have to learn to love it though. I will save $108 by just kicking the coffee habit.

If you have any tips or tricks for me leading up to this month, I would love to hear them. If you want to follow along with how it is going I will share random updates on Instagram. I will also write a mid-month and end of month update here. Want to join me in my no-spend August?