No, Spend February 2021

“A fresh month has come! Open your mind for opportunities, and you will be amazed at how much you are capable of achieving!”

It’s that time again! Time for us to do a NO SPEND MONTH!! We did this back in November 2018 (read more here) As well as back in July 2019! (read more here) and again February 2020 (read more here)

By doing these NO Spend Month Challenges not only does it help us control our spending, it really is fun to get creative with our cooking by using what we already have! This challenge also helps us get a little bit closer to our goal of FI! {Financially Independent!}

Read more about our FIRE journey here.

To help us stay on track we are challenging ourselves to a no spending month.

What is No Spending Month?

Simply put, a no spend month is where you don’t spend unnecessary money, and stop impulse purchases throughout the month.  This helps you become aware of and stop, your unnecessary spending. ??

When you’re getting started on your journey to financial freedom, no spend month are more about becoming aware of how much you spend, and how often you make impulse purchases.  Speaking from experience, it’s amazing how much money gets spent on unnecessary items.

What Are The No Spend Month Goals?

Our goal for this month of no spending is to simply stop the unnecessary shopping, including grocery shopping. Okay, you might be thinking groceries?! YES!! In general society, our family included way overspends on groceries each month.

A recently published study funded by the United States Department of Agriculture found that American consumers waste about one pound of food per day or 225-290 pounds per year. This means that roughly 20% of all food put on the plates of Americans is trashed every year, or enough to feed 2 billion extra people annually.

This study makes me so sad we are just wasting our resources! We try to utilize any old food we can by either giving it to our chickens or putting it into our compost to later put back into our garden.

The rules for our No Spend February

• NO Grocery Shopping
• NO Gift Buying {includes Valentine’s Day!}
• NO Restaurants
• NO Online Shopping

What we can buy this month

• Paying our bills
• Gas for my car
• Medical Emergencies
• Rental Property/Business doesn’t count in this challenge.

How we prepped for this no spend month

We took inventory of all the food we already had and basically purchased the basics and items we didn’t have in our 3 freezers and fridge. Then, We sat down and made a meal plan and a list of items we needed. In all seriousness, we could totally survive on all the food we have in our freezers without shopping for this month.

This year I started to use a really cool FREE app called Supercook you enter all your food you currently have in your fridge, pantry, and freezers. It will come up hundreds of recipes you can make with the ingredients you currently have. You can also make a shopping list in the app too.

I’m actually looking forward to this challenge again!

Would you like me to keep you updated on our no spend month?

Have you ever completed a no spend month? I would love to hear your stories. Leave me a comment below!