Buy nothing for a month challenge

TheRealLane

You should read this book for ideas, "How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day" by Kath Kelly. I just picked it up in a second hand shop and it has some really good tips for saving money and doing things for free.

little_miss_thrifty

This weekend was not brilliant - spent money, but most was on food shopping. Had to get a little present for a party dd was invited to on Saturday...other than that, no spends today or yesterday.:T

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

Great idea might use it. I should really shop like this anyway or not shop as the case may be.
Hi everyone!:beer::money:

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

My sins are 'amazoning' Too many trips to Supermarkets and too many transactions. So in theory this might be a challenge worth doing provided I sort Scotland out.

166million

I am absolutely rubbish: 'unnecessary' expenditure at £84.23 for October. Appalling.

rictus123

Well I'm looking at taking on a 5.2k all in spends year for 2012. This will allow me to save 20k from my salary. I will allow myself to spend any money I earn from overtime on whatever I want, this will pay for fortnight in America In April. Saving 20k in a year would be immense and need An extreme budget. I'm going to do it though.

sharronej

166 Million - Don't be so hard on yourself! What was your unnecessary spend the month before? Is it on a downward trend? If so it's progress so well done, if not have a look at what it's been spent on and see if you it's something that you might need to add into your budget or whether it was an emotional spend as opposed to my habit of emotional eating.

Rictus - that's some quest you've set yourself, just remember that you need to live as well! This is the best time for you to save, before you have a family so go for it but don't leave yourself without any money for fun. Would it be the end of the world if you saved £18.5K and had an entertainment budget of 1.5K? Having said that I wish you all the very best of luck.

I seem to be on track, I haven't spent any money out of the bank and have kept to the envelope system. A complete no spend weekend because we've been on Cub Camp this weekend. I have had some unexpected bills though so I'm not romping ahead by any means - on the plus side I've paid off four little scraggily credit cards!

We're coming up to the last week of the month and I wish everyone good luck in our quest to control our whims and purchases.

Blonde_Ambition

Well, I still ran out of money before running out of the month but I like to think I was in a better situation than if I had not been thinking of this challenge.

Really going to try to reduce outgoings this month as going on holiday next month and need some spending money.

Definitely going to try to do more cupboard shopping.
Good luck everyone. Keep up the good work.

sharronej

Blonde Ambition, that's the right way to think of it. I want to pay a huge lump sum of our debt in January/February which will free up £360 pcm, I'm not finding it too bad because I'm so focused but I know that if I could get dh on board that we'd be able to save quite a bit month by month however he feels that we're chipping away at the debt so we should have some luxuries in life (by this he means his alcohol and sky t.v.)

Another weekend spent scouting so no spends other than dh bought me a can of coke and a new woggle :rotfl: Next weekend we're also scouting - a meeting on Saturday morning and then Remembrance Sunday Parade the next day.

I did have a small business spend of £6.99 and will need to spend £30 next week on further business expenditure so this will show as necessary unplanned spends in my account book. I picked up another Christmas present in the week but this comes out of my Christmas Budget so isn't a spend that I count iyswim

InaPickle

Hi all!

I'm very tempted to join in this challenge, but I have a question: I have music lessons, and while I guess they are 'extra' in terms of not being a strictly necessary bill, I can't mess up my teacher's livelihood (and also my progress!) by taking a month off. Could I still count it as part of my 'bills'?