Tuesday, January 29, 2013

No Spend Week: The Return

After our epic fail of No Spend Month, I am feeling hesitant to attempt it again.  But we had already agreed that after our weekend break, we would do one more week of NSM just to make up for ending early.  Of course, having a really fun weekend break with my BFF here, where we were able to go out to eat and drink a few times makes it easier.  And having it be only a week makes it seem REALLY easy.  I'm sure I will eat those words.  We are already on day two and I barely noticed!  But yeah, not spending money on Monday is way easier than not spending money on Saturday, as our last weekend of NSM proves.

I still have not gotten gas since before NSM started (go Mazda!), but my little gas light came on a few days ago, so I will need to do that.  K needs gas too, but we might try to squeak by with him using my car a few days to be able to hold off on two fill ups.  I will head to the grocery store to pick up some fresh produce.  After our weekend of indulgence, I feel like my meal plan for this week will have to be mostly gluten free and and meatless.

I found a money blog yesterday written by a woman who paid off a huge amount of debt in less than two years by going on what she calls a "spend fast".  It is basically a year long no spend month.  While I admire her discipline, that just sounds so miserable to me.  But you have to admit that it would be pretty cool to pay off all of your debt and start saving tons of money in such a short amount of time.  The plan that K and I have come up with for now is allowing a set budget for "fun" - that could be eating out, going to happy hour, going to a concert, taking a trip or anything else that falls in the not really necessary category    So that way, we won't feel like we are going crazy, but we also won't...go crazy.

The end of NSM will allow us to see if we actually learned anything about spending, and if we can actually apply any of our tactics in the real world.  I feel like learning how to have a balance is a process, and probably takes years.  At least it will be an adventure!

Start of No Spend Week
Day 1: $0
Day 2: $0

Let's see if we can make it 5 more days!

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