I’m about to do something I’ve never done before. In fact, I’ve often wondered about the reasoning behind why people do these. I’m about to find out for myself, as I’ve declared this week a no spend week. I’ve read about people who have gone long periods of time without spending any money except for necessities, but for my purposes the period will last about 6 days.
Why Am I Doing A No Spend Week?
We have an activity this weekend, and we need to make sure we have the funds for it. Our budget cycle is on a bimonthly cadence because we both get paid on the last day of the month and I also get paid on the 15th of each month. The second half of August is one of those three weekend budget cycles, which means our budgeted discretionary funds have to span three weekends instead of just two. Two weekends have gone by, and we’re in pretty good shape to keep our spending within our budgetary limits. We’ll have enough funds for this weekend’s activity if we don’t spend unnecessarily during this week.
Spending Danger Zones
We have several danger zones this week that could blow our budget plan:
- Dinner Invite: We have an invitation to go out to dinner with Friends on Wednesday. The last time we went to the restaurant involved with the invitation our bill was close to $100. We just had the same group of people over to our home for a pot luck, so I’m sure they’ll understand if we bow out this time.
- Groceries: I typically make a couple of weekday runs to Walmart to pick up grocery or household items we discover we could use during the week. I went grocery shopping over the weekend, have our meals planned out, and as far as I know we need absolutely nothing else before the end of next weekend. Anything that comes up will be heavily scrutinized for necessity.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll spend exactly $0 before Saturday evening. Right now I don’t see any reason why that can’t happen if we prioritize keeping funds for next weekend’s activity and keep ourselves from engaging in any unnecessary social functions or buying anything else unnecessarily during this week.
Check out this Friday’s Fist Pump Friday post to see how we’re doing!
How about you EOD Nation, have you every engaged in a no spend period of time? Why did you do it? Were you successful?
After the splurging I’ve done (all investing in ‘means of production’ e.g., fancy computers) we may need to that as well. Not a bad discipline it seems. Let us know how did you do.