The Spending Challenge

Maybe you have heard of the NO spend challenge? It’s where you spend no money for a whole month except on bills. I really wanted to try this but it seems a little difficult to fit my family’s needs into the picture, does it to you? I then came to the conclusion of trying parts of the NO spend challenge mixed with another idea. And I’m calling it the Spending Challenge.

HOW IT WORKS?

When I say SPENDING challenge that does not mean see how much you can spend in a month. It means spending less in the month. The goal is to half spend or NO spend.

This does not mean only pay half or none of your rent/mortgage or any bill for that matter. Those items are NOT included in this challenge. It’s the items that are flexible in your budget (aka: food, gas, eating out, entertainment, shopping, etc…).

So during this challenge, you would only spend half of your grocery budget for that month.

THE RULES

1. Pay the bills in FULL – Please don’t put yourself in a bad place by not paying your rent/mortgage, utilities, and so forth in full. This will just give you additional fees which would not save you money.
2. NO stocking up! – Just because you’re not spending your full budget for the month doesn’t mean you should stock up for 2 months prepping for the challenge. No, this is a challenge… It should be a little challenging plus you would probably overspend on those two months, saving you nothing.
3. HALF spend on the NEEDED things – the necessities or flexible items in your budget. AKA: food & gas
4. NO spend on the WANTED things – Ask yourself if you can physically live without it this month? AKA: eating out, entertainment, impulse purchases, online shopping, shopping for clothes, and so on…

THE SPENDING CHALLENGE

What do you think of the challenge? Remember you will be paying your bills in FULL, spending half on the needed items, and NOT spending on the wanted items. The thing I really like about this challenge is that I feel that I could do this 3-4 times in a year. Which would save me a lot of money, how about you?

Take the spending challenge and see what happens!!

p.s. I would love to hear how it went for you!