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Thursday, January 1, 2015

125. The "No Spend Challenge" Day 1 - January 2015



Time for another No Spend Challenge! This month we are challenging ourselves again to cut spending drastically with a “No Spend Month.” Check out our first challenge last year in October 2014, also what we learned 31 days later from our October 2014 No Spend Challenge, and finally some highlights from the month of October 2014

We've actually created a group with over 1300 members on Facebook called The No Spend Challenge to encourage and facilitate helping others take the challenge to save. 

This is the first day so simply put we’re making the commitment and setting some ground rules.

I think both of us are a little apprehensive about doing this challenge again. Even more so trying this again on a month that once again is essentially 5 weeks.

Our goal is to save 20% of our budget by the end of the month. We believe this goal is SMART. It’s specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-sensitive.

Please note each family should account for their own circumstances. If there are known events like birthdays, vacations, vehicle maintenance, doctors appointments fit them in the budget and then move on. If you’re doing this for the first time and you don’t have a huge stockpile of food in the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer you’ll probably have to make a few trips to the store and include that in your rules as well.

We’ve set our sights again not to spend money on anything outside of our basic necessities and eat from our food pantry, refrigerator, and freezer as much as possible. We’re limiting grocery shopping to essentials 
(milk, eggs, fresh fruit, etc.) only.

These are the things that we will seek to avoid this month:

No eating out at restaurants.
No Starbucks.
No shopping at stores.
No shopping online.
No excess entertainment (we already subscribe to Netflix monthly, but no Redbox or Amazon Online rentals). 
No extras. (chocolate, manicures, pedicures, games, etc.)
No home décor.
No toys. (We tend to buy $1 toys at Target)
No crafts or hobbies.

We’ve agreed to a mini-budget to allow for our basic needs  this month. This includes a small stipend for DW, myself, and miscellaneous expenses outside of our normal bills we may incur this month. 

We're also accounting for some free give aways in our new Facebook Group: Dave Ramsey - Total Money Makeover (note the group has no official affiliation with Dave Ramsey). This group was officially launched last night about 9pm and already has 400 members! 

We hope this challenge will help us once again refocus our efforts in reducing our debt. We also hope it will motivate us to be better stewards of the resources God has given us.

We understand that life does not always go according to planned and our experiment may not go exactly as planned. However, we hope once again the discipline will prove beneficial and a good learning experience regardless of the outcome.



Source I used: http://www.livingwellspendingless.com/31-days/livingwellspendingzero/


#nospendchallenge


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