Amazing April's No-Spend Days Challenge!

cathybird

Welcome to Amazing April's No-Spend Days Challenge! 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 this month 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, essential health spending such as dental checkups or medications, 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. 

April emojis:

Off to a start
5 days
10 days
15 days
20 days
Target reached
Target beaten

Everyone welcome to join! 😊😊

cathybird

April 2026 NSD targets 

AuntieL 15
beanielou 19
Bluekelpie26 14
cathybird 15
crazybeautiful 20
Deb 4 10
Dizzycap 10
doingitanyway 12
Doris17 20
ET22 20
GreenFrogMum 10
Honeysucklelou2 10
InDebtEnby 13
KajiKita 20
laurenh1 18
LittleMissDetermined 20
loopylupin 12
Mamma2004 14
Optimistic Saver 22
Pinkpieuni 10
RhiBi 15
Rupacomp 10
ThriftyPrincess40 22
VickyA 2 15
Wanna Bee Free 10

🌞 🌞  Everyone welcome to join! 🌞 🌞

ET22

Can I join please? NSD 20

cathybird

hi there @ET22 , good to see you here, I've added you to the list, best of luck with the challenge

KajiKita

Thanks for the new thread @cathybird 😊

Think I might struggle a bit to hit target this month as I have a week off next week (tomorrow) and most of those won’t be NSDs 🤷‍♀️😊

KK

Dizzycap

WOW - Look at all those fabulous emoji! 😍😎. Here we are eagerly awaiting April and I bumped into the thread, so it's bookmarked ready for the NSD off.

Thanks for another fabulous thread as always @cathybird and welcome all newbies - enjoy the challenge 🤗😋 xx

beanielou

Thanks as always for our shiny new thread @cathybird 🤗

cathybird

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81942024#Comment_81942024

@KajiKita do you want to put it down to 15, would that be easier? Just asking really. xx :)

KajiKita

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81942363#Comment_81942363

Thanks for the suggestion, but I should aim for 20 as I want my overall spend for this month to be controlled! 😉

KK

GreenFrogMum

Hi! I’ve never joined a NSD challenge before and April will definitely be a challenge. We’re going away for 5 days over Easter, which I know will end up being fairly big spend days but I have planned for them.

I’ve just started my DMP journey, waiting for defaults and trying to save an emergency fund. I have problems with impulsive spending (I’m AuDHD, which doesn’t help) and I need to get a handle on that if I ever want to sort myself out.

So I’m going to aim for 10 NSD in April, with the plan to increase to 15 in May.

beanielou

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81942579#Comment_81942579

Welcome to our lovely thread.