The Rules for Our No-Spend Year

As I mentioned in the last post, we as a family are going to not be spending anything extra through the 2017 year. 

Today I thought I would share with you the rules we have set out to follow as a family.

I am sharing all of this with you as an extra added layer of protection for us (ha!) that will hopefully provide the accountability to help us continue this for the entire year. After all, y'all are watching us so we better not sway from these rules! 

Because right now we feel kind of scared and nervous and ridiculous about this.

But it will be fun to see if we are up for the challenge. 

One of the things I think I should mention (in case you are missing my obvious hints to get you to read my last post, ahem!) is that this is not just about money.  We are trying to change our thinking and our attitudes as a family.

That being said, we have different traditions and ways of living in our family than I am sure you do in your family and vice versa.  For example, since our kids have turned 8 we have given them the choice for each birthday to have either a party with their friends or to go on a local-ish trip.  This year they have both chosen trips.  We will still go on the trips but how we go and what we do and spend will be different than before.  Now is the trip actually needed?  Heck to the no.  But we have already decided to go ahead and take those trips.  That's a decision our family has made. We recently purchased a lake cottage that needs some work.  While we will not be dumping money into it during our no-spend year, we will still be spending money to begin the renovations on the cottage.

 So you see, how we do this will look differently than how you would do this.  And that's okay. 

If you are doing this too and have taken the challenge I'd love to hear how you plan to do this!

Now, the rules are not set in stone.  Moses did not come off Mt. Sinai with them.  They are rules our family will have to look back on so when we want to spend money on something really, REALLY badly; we will have something we can look to to remind us of what we are to do.  Because I know how this goes.  I will twist every rule I can get my hands on to be able to buy something.  I need the rules.  My kids need rules.  We are rules-kind-of-people. 

Here are our rules for our year of Not Spending:

• We'll Only Buy for Our Needs

This year we are buying only things we need and not things that we want. 

This has already been hard for me. 

I have wanted to buy Christmas clearance so, SO bad.  But I don't truly NEED anything there.  And Lord willing all of that stuff will be there in years to come.  Try as I might to convince myself that I have to buy it all now, it really will be there in later years. I have so much wrapping paper and everything already in our attic that I don't need to go out this year and mindlessly buy a bunch of stuff. 

So we are not going to be buying something unless there is a need that we have determined.

• Food Must Be From Home

We go on a lot of vacations.  At least we have in the past.  Nick is on the road a ton and there are a lot of opportunities for us to travel with him fairly inexpensively.  The most expensive thing about those trips seems to be all of us going out to eat. 

Nick has said that he wants to make sure we can still travel as a family and travel for field trips and things but we are going to be cutting all of the food costs out (mostly!) by bringing food from home. 

This also applies to going out to eat.  Craving pizza?  Instead of calling Dominos we will make it at home.  Is pizza a need?  No we could eat beans all the live long day but we are going to allow ourselves to enjoy some of our wants (of food, at least!)

• Homemade is Best

I've mentioned before that we are still going to be celebrating holidays and birthdays. I am sure we will purchase some gifts but we are going with the motto that "homemade is best".  I have a kajillion craft kits and projects that I could make for people for gifts.  Not only would those provide us with a meaningful gift but those are things we have already purchased, money invested in things to do that have been sitting around for years.  So a gift and something to spend my time doing...seems like a win, win for me. 

Homemade will be implemented, not just with gifts but with everything.  Games during the summer?  Homemade.  Halloween costumes?  Homemade.  So and so forth.  We are going to be making lots and lots of things.  And that will keep us very busy which I like the idea of very much.  No more bored children here...they'll be too busy making something.

• Maximize Our Usage of What We Do Buy

There are some things that we will still be purchasing.  This may seem crazy to some but we are keeping our gym membership. Our kids take swim lessons there as well as 4 other types of classes.  We get huge discounts by having a membership.  That being said Nick and I don't always take advantage of our membership like we should. 

But this year we will so we are getting the most out of what we are spending.  After all, with a family gym membership of $50 a month, going every day figures out to be less than $2 a day for our family of four to go and exercise and spend time together.   And that seems like a good deal, especially with us not spending money on other "fun" things. 

So like with our gym membership, whatever we do buy we will get the most of our purchase.  Like how my Grandma washes plastic baggies and reuses them (we will not be washing out plastic baggies). 

• Think Before We Buy

So this would seem like a no-brainer but allow me to explain.  We have a notebook that we are going to be keeping as a family.  If we have something that we really, REALLY want to buy, we are going to write it down.  We'll jot it down and then come back in a few days and write how we remedied that need.  What we learned from it.  I am imagining I will be writing several entries about wanting to buy Emma an outfit I see.  And I'll probably go back and reflect that we lived our life with what we have and survived.  Hallelujah!

Also if we have something that we think truly is a need, we will write it down and ponder it.  Pray about it.  Stress about it.  After all, is it really a need? 

I found myself doing this very thing this morning when I was cleaning the tub.  I was almost out of cleaner and instantly thought "I need to go buy more cleaner."  But after pondering it I thought about how I have a ton of baking soda and vinegar that would clean our bathtub.  And I have bleach.  And if I was really honest with myself (this is embarrassing) I have bottles and bottles of cleaner that have never even been opened.  So by stopping to think about it I found that I really didn't have a need at all. 

• Birthdays and Holidays are Still On

I mentioned above that homemade gifts will be given from our home.  But I am sure we will still buy gifts.  To clarify our gift buying, if we do buy gifts we are going to have a strict budget and keep to it.  No more frivolous buying of spending a ton of money on any and every little thing.  Those times are done. 

So those are our rules.  As you can see we could make this a lot more strict and say, "beans only, no gifts, nothing!"  But we are keeping some things in our lives that aren't true needs but things that are needed for our family to be happy.  For us this isn't about making ourselves miserable but rather to find those areas where we need to change, to learn gratitude, and to grow, and stretch ourselves in those. 

Are you taking a no-spend challenge?  What are your rules?

Comment below if you are joining me with a no-spend challenge and what your rules are. 

Have a great day friends!