April No Spend Days – Begin

I’ve noticed that many other financial bloggers like to challenge themselves to limit their number of days they spend money, for example, they may try to go for 5 no-spend days for a week to see if they can restrain their spending to only 2 days. Up until now, I have only planned for, and kept track of how much I spend, but never how often or how many days I spend, which I’m now quite curious about (゜゜)～ I don’t think no-spend days are super useful from an accounting perspective because if I don’t buy milk today I can always buy it tomorrow, along with anything else I might need for the week. But I think it teaches us to plan our spending more efficiently, like maybe grouping errands together to save time or gasoline. Lots of other bloggers say no spend days are very beneficial for their financial lives, so I’m going to give this thing a try too and see how it goes (゜o゜)

For the Month of April I challenge myself to 25 no-spend days.

I think the effectiveness of no-spend days depends on one’s discretionary expenses. If I don’t spend too much on toys, fast foods, and luxuries then most of my expenses are probably basic needs which I can’t do anything about and have to pay sooner or later anyway, like hydro (electricity) or groceries.  April has 30 days, so with 25 days of no spending, I still have 5 days remaining when I CAN spend money. This will be an interesting experience for me because I have never done this before. I’ve created a new table on the right side of this blog which I’ll try to update everyday (April’s 25 No Spend Days Challenge) →

Unfortunately today is only the 2nd day of the month and I have already used up 1 of my 5 days of spending. My mortgage and strata fees (HOA) are always due at the beginning of the month and since yesterday was a weekend, the mortgage and strata payments were automatically debited from my bank account today. This means I have 4 more days in April to spend in order to be successful with my challenge. I will need to plan my spending carefully so that I can combine multiple expenses on the same day, like groceries and loan repayments for example. Ok, I’ll give an update later this month (=^_^=)…

[edit]
Here is the mid month update
and here is the end of month conclusion
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Random Useless Fact: For every $100 spent at a locally-owned business, $68 stays in the local economy compared to only $43 if spent at a national chain.