Recap: My wife and I decided to take on J. Money’s No Spend Challenge he issued on Untemplater. We set specific guidelines and set out to save more money by spending less.
The Results
We were doing just fine and keeping our desires in check. Then the Gun Show happened. I’ve been wanting a handgun for some time now. We found just the piece I wanted at a decent price. With the money already in savings, we decided to make the purchase.
Well that opened the door. Once we had made one purchase, it’s like we felt liberated to make other purchases that we had been holding off on. By the end of the day, we had spent $841.72!
At that point we gave up on the No Spend month and decided to try again a different month. Fortunately, we had been very conservative the first 17 days of the month, so we couldn’t do as much damage in the remaining 14 days.
What we learned
First, just because you trip and fall doesn’t mean you have to hit your head against a rock too. Once we had made one purchase that we shouldn’t have made, then we should have been extra vigilant to stop there. Instead, we just let our guard down. So don’t let one mistake snowball into another.
Second, have a support group outside of just your spouse. My wife and I both made the decision to break our No Spend challenge. Had we been able to call on a third person, then we may have made different decisions. If it works for alcoholics (addiction) then it will work for spending (addiction).
Last, boy I was glad that we did have a savings account and we didn’t put anything on a credit card. Even though we spent a sizable amount of money in one day, not one penny was put on a credit card. It felt great to just buy want we wanted to (I claimed “needed to”) without incurring a single iota of debt. So save for big purchases and avoid debt.
Let’s try again
We are determined to have a No Spend month. So stay tuned for Round 2.
