Marvellous March's No-Spend Days Challenge!

cathybird

This challenge is all about helping people to save money by setting aside days every month where you deliberately don't spend unnecessary cash. Over the short term, it can help you have a more frugal month. Over the long term, if you stick with it, it can help change your mindset because you get out of the habit of frittering money away and start automatically holding off from spending instead. It also helps you delay purchases, which in turn means you lose interest in a lot of things you might otherwise impulse buy.

Another good thing with this challenge is we're all in it together, and people will help you on bad days and cheer you on on good days, and the support and accountability can really help make it easier to keep going with it. And if all else fails, there's always next month

To join, just post the number of no-spend days (NSDs) you're aiming for in March and you are on your way!

Tips for the challenge:

1. It's totally up to you but if you've never done the challenge before, it's probably simpler to start with a goal of 10 or (at most) 15.

2. It is fine to exclude necessary expenses eg petrol, groceries, pet food, etc, when it comes to deciding what is and isn't an NSD. It is also completely fine to exclude automated or recurring payments such as bills, mortgage or direct debits.

3. It does help to post every time you notch up an NSD, or at least every two or three days ... it's easy to lose track! If you want to keep track of your NSDs in your MSE signature, that can be really motivating too

4. It also helps to bookmark the thread, it's much easier to find.

5. NSDs are trickier than they seem and easily derailed. It can work better if you notch up as many days as you can in the first half of the month, or think of the month in thirds so if you're aiming for 10 NSDs, try to do 4 days in the first 10, 3 in the second and 3 in the third. And if you feel that you're falling behind, there's no shame in changing your target! Sometimes life just gets in the way, and the challenge should be fun, not a grind.

March

Off to a start =

5 days =

10 days =

15 days =

20 days =

Target reached =

Target beaten =  

cathybird

March targets

AuntieL 15

Balancinglife 18
beanielou 19
bloomfelt
blubella
BudgetingBelinda
Caeraugirl 20
Captspar
cathybird 15
Couldsavemore 16
Crazycatlady2 18
Flying By 14
GeorgianaCavendish
Geriatricmum 10
Honeysucklelou2 10
HotDog2020 14
ilovetea 20
JustALass
KajiKita 18
keggie 18
laura lau 16
leftatthetrafficlights 24
lianne1984
LittleMissDetermined 17
madlyn 10
Makingabobor2 15
Money Choices
Mrs Cautious 15
MrsSave
Nervous1234 23
OnlyJealousOfBirds
PurplePhoenix62
QueenJess
Rupacomp 10
Saver-upper
SecondStar
short bird 18
Thevalueofless 20
Worlds Worst Superhero

Newcomers welcome!

beanielou

Thanks cathybird for our shiny new thread. 

leftatthetrafficlights

Thanks @cathybird 😁 I'll be doing much better at updating this month!! 🤦‍♀️😉😂 

madlyn

Hi everyone, could I join for March please?
I'm going to aim for 10 days and just to confirm, anything that comes out of your bank as a DD or SO is ok? it's just if you go somewhere and physically pay for something that is trying to be avoided?

HotDog2020

The rules are up to you to make as long as you stick by them, for example I have budgeted everything and when I go over budget or spend on things outside of a plan, unless it is crisis buy then I call that a NS day, @madlyn.

cathybird

madlyn said:

Hi everyone, could I join for March please?
I'm going to aim for 10 days and just to confirm, anything that comes out of your bank as a DD or SO is ok? it's just if you go somewhere and physically pay for something that is trying to be avoided?

hi madlyn and welcome to our lovely thread! I've added you to the list Re direct debits/standing orders, they definitely don't count towards spend days, nor do bills or mortgage, and neither do expenses like public transport, fuel or basic groceries - anything that counts as a necessary spend, basically, though what you define as necessary is is partly up to you. It's not so much how you pay for it that matters, so physically paying for things is fine, it's more whether or not the item/expense was needed. I hope that helps?

Caeraugirl

Re direct debits/standing orders, they definitely don't count towards spend days, nor do bills or mortgage, and neither do expenses like public transport, fuel or basic groceries - anything that counts as a necessary spend, basically, though what you define as necessary is is partly up to you. It's not so much how you pay for it that matters, so physically paying for things is fine, it's more whether or not the item/expense was needed. I hope that helps?

For the last two months of the challenge I've counted my weekly grocery delivery and diesel fill up as spend days. It's been good in as much as I tend to defer other spends until the day the shop comes, but I might try excluding these as spends for March and see whether I can increase my number of NSDs.

cathybird

Caeraugirl said:

Re direct debits/standing orders, they definitely don't count towards spend days, nor do bills or mortgage, and neither do expenses like public transport, fuel or basic groceries - anything that counts as a necessary spend, basically, though what you define as necessary is is partly up to you. It's not so much how you pay for it that matters, so physically paying for things is fine, it's more whether or not the item/expense was needed. I hope that helps?

For the last two months of the challenge I've counted my weekly grocery delivery and diesel fill up as spend days. It's been good in as much as I tend to defer other spends until the day the shop comes, but I might try excluding these as spends for March and see whether I can increase my number of NSDs.

@Caeraugirl you definitely don't have to count either! xx

leftatthetrafficlights

cathybird said:

Caeraugirl said:

Re direct debits/standing orders, they definitely don't count towards spend days, nor do bills or mortgage, and neither do expenses like public transport, fuel or basic groceries - anything that counts as a necessary spend, basically, though what you define as necessary is is partly up to you. It's not so much how you pay for it that matters, so physically paying for things is fine, it's more whether or not the item/expense was needed. I hope that helps?

For the last two months of the challenge I've counted my weekly grocery delivery and diesel fill up as spend days. It's been good in as much as I tend to defer other spends until the day the shop comes, but I might try excluding these as spends for March and see whether I can increase my number of NSDs.

@Caeraugirl you definitely don't have to count either! xx

I must admit that I always counted grocery shopping and fuel top ups as spend days too!! 🤦‍♀️ I won't now (although I will still record them) so that will make life a lot easier!! 

laura_lau

I have been counting transport because it's not a necessary expense in my case: sometimes I take the bus / tube / train to see friends, and that I count as a spend day (also because it usually is followed by other expenses anyway). Transport for work it depends: I have different options, the bus, by far the cheapest, or train, lazier but approximately 4 times more expensive. If I go to work with the bus, then I count it as NSD, but if I'm lazy and take the train, then it's a spend day.