"NO SPEND" Challenge

Call me crazy but the hubby and I are attempting a "NO SPEND" month for the entire month of October. By "NO SPEND" I really mean "almost no spend". The idea came from a

pinterest link I saw on a friend's account. Rachel Meeks from the Small Notebook blog  explains how this has become an annual tradition in their house. She says they budget $400 a month (currently, when she started it was only $250) to spend on themselves like food, gas, clothes, household items, and fun. Excluded items are: rent and bills, insurance, health care, business expenses, and gifts for others. In other words there is NO UNNECESSARY SPENDING.

At first glance this seemed easy to me so I showed it to my husband and asked, "Do you think we could possible do this?". Without hesitation, Mr. Cheap pants replied, "I can". Of course I knew that was going to be his answer before I even asked him. We agreed to try this with a $250 budget for this month. We decided on $250 because that was what Rachel's budgeted when she first started this challenge in 2007.

I'm expecting to see this face a few time this month

 Looking at our budget, this will be no easy task. We tracked every single penny we spent during the month of August and here are some examples of what we spent in different categories:

August 2012 Spending

Gas:  $148

Groceries: $260 (lower than normal)

Eating out: $235 (higher than normal)

Crafts: $102

Not spending money on eating out is going to be the toughest (for all three of us), me especially. I HATE packing a lunch. HATE IT. It takes so much work and planning, both of which I don’t want to deal with in an already stressed morning routine and I never feel like getting my lunch packed the night before, I just want to sit and relax at the end of the day. “But this was your idea”, said smart cheap husband. Yes. Yes it was. I’ll find a way.

Yeah, might see this one too!

So here are the top three reasons we are going to attempt this “NO SPEND” month:

1.Christmas is less than 3 months away and we always need money around Christmas time. I thought if we limited our spending in the month of October, our holiday spending in November might be a bit easier on the budget.

2. I like a good challenge. I am extremely competitive and I don’t like to lose at anything. Hopefully this challenge will help me use my competitive nature for good rather than for evil {insert evil laugh here}. Hubby rolls eyes and says, “Yeah right”.

3. We’re expecting baby #2. YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! When our newest bundle of joy arrives in February 2013, they will be putting a squeeze on our already squeezed budget. Day care alone for this new little worm will come with a cost of $310 a week. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not burying $1200 in the backyard every month just because I got nothing else to do with it.

Johnathan practicing being a big brother

I’ll be blogging weekly about our progress and how we’re doing towards our “NO SPEND” goal.  It will be hard, and it is going to require sacrifice. I’m hoping it will free up some time to work on those new year’s resolutions that I made but have not gotten around to. As the old saying goes, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. We’ll see if that really holds true for this family of three (soon to be four).