The No-Spend October crashed and burned. Hard. I spent money left and right - on excessive birthday gifts for Erik, on coffee every other day, on fast food meals and Halloween care packages for friends. My sugar fast? Never happened. Seriously, I didn't even go one day without sugar. Journaling every day was my biggest success, and even that wasn't actually every day.
So what am I doing for November? I'm taking another swing at my no-spend challenge and putting more effort in this time. Other than that, I don't have the time to focus on much else. My part-time, at-home contracting job is almost over and I'm tied up with all of that work, I'm planning to work at the mall at a seasonal retail job, and work is going to get hectic with my bosses taking vacation at the end of the month. Plus, I still need to get down to business in terms of my job search.
It's always a little bit rough to stop my spending habit. A few tips I have:
- Avoid retail shopping at all costs. If I stop going in Target, I will stop spending all of my money there. I don't look at flyers or coupons unless I absolutely need something, like medicine.
- Delete all advertising e-mails. I get a lot of e-mails from coupon sites and websites offering sales and deals. Normally, that's fantastic because I find some really good stuff. However, during my no-spend challenges, I delete everything as quickly as possible. The only exceptions are things that catch my eye as really, really good deals or a gift idea for someone.
- Make my lunch and coffee at home. This takes a little extra effort the night before but it makes it so easy to say no to going out to lunch for food and coffee. Also, I save the gas money I normally spend driving around.
When I did this successfully in August, it took a week or so to get in the swing of it. I did spend quite a bit this past weekend, but part of that was a get-well gift for my cousin and dinner out with Erik. For the rest of the month, I'm going to close my wallet unless it's for something absolutely necessary.
How do you save money? Are you good at it? What do you spend the most money on?
