January no spend thread

[ivykaty44]

Come and join us if you want a simple no spend month

The aim is to just spend on supermarket shop & fuel (Direct debits first bills)

No spending on anything else till February. The idea being it gives your purse & bank balance a rest after December & take stock of mindless spending

Ahh I’m so glad to help ivykaty44! It’s simple tricks like that help keep you focussed. I’m terrible for spending on crap I just don’t need so I’ll be checking in regularly here for inspiration.

Going to be on trains for about 6 hrs tomorrow so taking my sandwiches and coffee in a flask :)

Spent about £1.50 on two months worth of antihistamines today and that's it. Predicting no spend for mon - fri this week as I'll be in work and I take my own lunches anyway.

I'm cutting out frivolous food for the month.I also intend to eat the contents of the freezer,be more imaginative with left overs(so that lots of small unlabel bags of things are not in the freezer).
That and no spending should save me a bit I think.

Food shopping complex at the supermarket & walked there & back. Shopping for top up bits to last the week so bill was pleasantly small which was good as haven’t been since before Xmas.
Haven’t put any fuel in the car & am going to hold out until it’s on the red light

No spend day today. 🥳
Tea is (from foods already in the house) crispy homemade wedges topped with crispy bacon, homemade salsa and mozerella cheese with some home made coleslaw and some veg sticks and then for dessert we forgot to eat the 2 jars of peaches in alcohol I bought for Christmas time so one of those with some Kelly’s clotted cream ice cream.
Also picked up a brand new block of lush henna hair dye for the next time I dye my hair from olio so will save money on that at a later point too 😊
Eldest back to school tomorrow and my last day off with my youngest for his inset day and would usually spend money doing something nice for 1-2-1 time but we’ve decided we’ll take his go-cart out for a bit, play some football then come home and make a pancake stack together for brunch and play some board games, I’m really looking forward to it!

@ivykaty44 sounds fantastic!

No spend day here too. We went to a local county park and had the morning exploring then chilled out in the afternoon.

Tomorrow will be £50 on driving lessons but that's budgeted for so apart from that it will be a no spend day tomorrow as well fingers crossed!

@ivykaty44 thank you! I’m definitely going to try that!

@Igottastartthinkingbee Great idea!

Did my weekly food shop today. It was £37 instead of the £100 I budget for it because we are using up what we have in. I made a meal plan for the week first for all meals. Hopefully I remembered everything.

Filled the car with fuel too (needed for work, I’m a community nurse and live rurally). I budget £60 a week but instead it was £52.

No spends again (not counting food, fuel and bills).

Something I’ve learnt about fuel

The more gentle you drive, the longer your fuel lasts.
Anticipate red lights and junctions, take your foot of the accelerator, people seem to push the pedal down and waste fuel as it’s a red light and they have to stop.

Every other time you fill up with petrol you should also check your tyre pressure, it saves fuel

Never run your car to defrost as it use more mpg than any other driving.

There are many other ways, never use hot water, but nothing wrong with Luke warm cloth, just Luke warm and wear rubber gloves 😉 takes me two minutes & im clear on all windows

I paid our 2 credit card bills and council tax this evening (both 0%), but one needs to be paid in full by June and the other in September I think (to avoid any interest). It's doable, but will be tight as I do not want to dip into savings. So we're going to have to be extra frugal.

I remembered that we had lots of clubcard vouchers so we will use some of them for a meal out in a couple of weeks as a nice (free) treat.

I've also got enough points at subway for a free roll, which will come in handy for Thursday night when we're off to our local comedy club in the evening. I won tickets, so free and we'll drink water while we're there as the drinks are really expensive.

Can you use February and March, when you don’t have council tax to pay that onto the credit card for June

@ivykaty44 Yep! That's exactly what we'll be doing!

Also, concentrating more on the one that is due sooner.

You do realise that you can contact your council tax and ask to have the payments spread over 12 months, then the extra each month can also go to the creditors card debit through 20/21 and might make life easier for you

Well ive unsubscribed from many shop emails there are some more to do but I am going to do the more obscure ones as they come through.
Out of site out of mind etc.
Brought my lunch to work today which is a £3 saving baby steps!

@PH30B3 I recently did the same so no temptations!

We also changed our gas and electricity the other day and will save around £30 a month. We also have so many tea bags in our house as my MIL keeps buying then for us (no idea why) but we dont really drink tea. So we are going to try and swap a coffee a day to tea. I dont hate tea just prefer coffee. That will help wasting them and hopefully mean we will over the long run wont have to buy as much coffee.

Husband did the food shop this morning and used a tesco stamp saving card thing which we were given around Christmas so our weekly food shop was £6!

Food bank would be the place for giving tea bags away if you can’t face drinking...

Wow @Weekday28 what a great food shop spend!
I feel the same about tea, I don’t hate it but much prefer coffee. Although I need to cut down. I ran out a few days ago and the headache and nausea was unbearable! Been wondering for a long time why I sporadically get migraine like headaches, even been to the opticians, 😳 and now I’ve realised that my huge caffeine consumption may play a part in it!
I’ve done this weeks top up food shop as we had almost run out of cat food so thought I may aswel get it done and I spent £41.20 which sounds allot for a top up but that was with laundry detergent, food for over a week for our 4 cats, and our food and I probably won’t need to shop again for around 10 days. I did buy a picture frame for a print I had though which had a huge reduction but probably could have gone without.
I do however now have my rice cake print on display.
It says “rice cakes have no business calling themselves ‘cakes’ at all” with a picture of a couple of shady looking rice cakes with faces. Love it!

I didn’t do well today. My new medication makes me really hungry and although I took in loads of food for work I had eaten it by ten. I got a sandwich for £2.50.

Tomorrow I’m taking in a whole shops worth of food for lunch!

I think I might have to drop out of this thread! I spent £4.50 on green juice at the supermarket today after being turned down for my blood donation due to low iron levels and due to feeling a bit crappy about my appearance and needing to buy some new clothes and shoes I will be spending over the next week or so on some new items from charity shops and a hair cut.
I will try and make it as cheap as possible but don’t think I can justify keeping myself in a no spend thread anymore!
Good luck everyone, keep up the good work!

Gonewiththemadness
It’s about having no spend days, don’t worry about stuff you need to purchase.

It’s a bit of fun/challenge, not to be taken seriously about curbing spending on coffee here, magazine there, chocolate bar and sweet here.

Your more than welcome to stay 😊

Stay @Gonewiththemadness!

No spend day again here. I took in extra food for lunch today so I didn’t run out!

@KeepMewarm - great work! I failed slightly. Had an exercise class at lunch and I forgot water so had to buy a bottle. Other than that... success! Except for serious thigh burn now!

No spend day number 7, so going well

I did put fuel in the car, but I haven’t done since November so it lasts well, I’m hoping that I won’t have to fill up again until March