My family and I are about to enter a No-Spend February, which is a way to analyze and adjust a person or family's financial budgeting approach, and most importantly, reign in frivolous spending.
The idea is to only spend money on the "four walls" that are necessary to live, while cutting out all other spending for an entire month. The four walls are:
Shelter
Basic food requirements
Transportation
Utilities/Bills
So... no clothing, eating out, entertainment/gaming/events, drinking, smoking, lottery tickets, Starbucks lattes, random app purchases, NO GOING TO THE MOVIES. A tough one for the MoFos, which will have most of them not joining in, I am sure!
*If you like road snacks, buy them at the grocery store and bring them with you etc. Make coffee at home and bring it with you etc. Sorry New Englanders: NO DUNKIN DONUTS!
There are exceptions: Car repair, medical emergencies, prescriptions etc. Just use common sense here.
I have a PDF tracker sheet if you want want, just let me know I can email it over.
Some helpful hints:
Tell your friends/family, both to ensure accountability and to let people know your usual hang out session won't include your usual food delivery order.
No cheat days!
If an item comes up that you want, make a list, and assess it in a need vs want paradigm at end of month - this is the entire focus of doing this: assessing needs vs. wants.
Use a spending tracking sheet or a finance app to monitor all transactions.
In summary, the object here to to quash instant gratification through spending, curb or halt retail therapy (my wife...oy vey!!), and inculcate better habits when analyzing wants vs needs. My wife has a nasty habit of randomly stopping in at stores buying things she doesn't need, and finding them, still with the tags on them, months later in a closet.
As an aside, this is good time to analyze bills, try to knock some down if possible, and perhaps adjust how you go grocery shopping by trying to find bulk deals, use coupons and things of that nature. Also a good time to analyze entertainment funding, whether or not streaming has gotten out of hand, gaming etc.
One example is that you can try to call your internet company, threaten them with moving your service because the other company will offer you the same service for $XX.XX, and either actually move your service, or get them to knock 40 bucks off your bill. Stuff like that.
I will be using this thread to track my progress, but though I would put it live on MoFo in case anyone wants to join. I w ill be making edits to this post as I think of things to add, as well.
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell