If you’ve been here and listening to the podcast, you know what I’m about to say!
Every year, in January, I try to have a no spend week. What is a no spend week? Well, let me tell you about it! It’s a week where you commit to not spending any money other than on needs, basic living needs. You still need to pay your bills, like rent, loans, electricity. Of course you still have to pay for gas and food. This is where it gets exciting (insert happy dance here), you are only allowed to go to the grocery store if you cannot absolutely make do with what you have at home.
If you need to eat breakfast for dinner or eat rice 3 times instead of the usual two, so be it! As long as you are not going hungry you are good! If you do need to buy milk or bread, be sure to get only that, nothing more. No, coffee from your favourite coffee shop is not a need! You can delay gratification until next week! Come on, you got this!
The Goal is to go through the food in your house.
The goal is to eat all that food that is sitting in your pantry and your freezer that you haven’t eaten yet. This is the opportunity to go through all of that so that next week, you can buy fresh new staples that will get you excited about cooking again! This will help you save some money but it will also help you to reduce waste. We both know you are waiting for the perish date to arrive so you can throw away that can of sauce! I see you! I am you!
With all this inflation, with having spent a couple of weeks over the Holidays eating a lot, this no spend week is really a must! Let’s face it, chances are you overspent over the Holidays and right now a little extra cash would come handy! And let me tell you a secret, I turned my no spend week into a no spend month! Yep!
Gardening is the new thing!
I just realized I had so much food in my freezer and one of my goals this year is to live a slower life and enjoy the moment. And I don’t want to spend the moment cooking! I want to spend it gardening, yes, I decided to take up gardening! (😬) So, by cooking all the things I have in the freezer right now is going to help me spend less time in the kitchen! Let me explain, I want to eat healthier, cook less and enjoy more. So next month, when I go shopping, I will be more intentional about what I actually bring home with me.
I have a slow cooker that I want to take advantage of, so I will be more careful about the meat and fish I buy. I don’t want to eat fried food (this is like a BIG GOAL) so I won’t buy meat that I know I love fried, does that make sense? I want to eat more vegetables, I will buy the ones I know we eat, not the ones I want to “start eating” but don’t really like. (these are the ones that usually end up in the freezer from year to year.)
This month of January, I’ve spent 21.89€ in groceries, for the whole month, for 4 adults! If you’ve been here long enough, you know there are months that I spend 1200€ on groceries and I’m always trying to get that number down. This tells me a lot about my spending habits! This tells me, I’m buying way too much food. I’m using the grocery store to feed all my wants (“it’s only a new rug, if I put it at the bottom of the cart it looks like food, right?! 🫣”)!
$100 a month = $1200 a year!
One of the things that I’ve been doing is making soup at least 4 times a week. That helps with using all those vegetables we don’t really like but are “good for you”. It’s also a good way to eat all the greens and it’s where there’s least resistance, at least in my house, to eat vegetables! I cook all the vegetables, I put everything in the blender and you can almost drink it up! For those that need to chew, I add beans or cabbage and it’s done!
So, how can we spend less every month this year, you ask? Well, how about we commit to a no spend week every month? How about every other month? Do you know that if you save $100 a month on a no spend week, that’s $1200 a year? That’s right! Can you honestly tell me that, if there was a big storm, strike, catastrophe of any kind, you couldn’t survive for a week with the food you have at home right now? You probably could!
I hope this has been helpful and makes you think about all the money you can save and all the food you won’t waste! Every little bit helps and remember, we save money so that we can spend it on the things that really matter to us. So that we can create that life we really want to live. And no, a no spend week has nothing to do with a scarcity mindset, it’s the opposite. It shows you care and you are not wasteful! Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, be it spend more money or waste food!
