No Spend February

After the holidays and a very busy January our bank account is bleeding. Just like every other married couple I know, money is a huge source of tension in our household.  For us the tension mostly stems from the fact that my husband - he is a saver and me, well I am a spender.  Couple that with being on one income and you have a recipe for disaster.  I'm sure many of you can relate, and I'm sure many of you have also read about the idea behind "no spend" months. We decided to finally try it out this month because, one, it is the shortest of the months and, two, it seemed like a good time to stick some extra moolah back into savings. 

Because this is our first no spend month we are not being super strict, and we created our own rules to ease into the idea of not spending. We started by figuring out where our biggest budget bleeds were happening and we quickly realized that eating out is our kryptonite. No surprise there.

Before the boys were born I stocked our freezer with healthy crockpot dishes and it made meal planning/saving on groceries so much easier! Since they've been around however, it seems like a lot of things have been shoved aside for convenient alternatives... showers were traded for dry shampoo, pants swapped out for leggings, bras replaced by nursing tanks... so it is no big surprise that home cooked meals were replaced by fast easy take-out. 

Basically the entire purpose of this month is to kick our rears into gear and get us back on budget. Since we have been eating out so much lately and I never really restocked our pantry after the holidays I headed to the store the last week of January to restock the pantry, fridge and freezer.

Our normal food budget is $500 per month - so to help save this month we have allotted only $20 per week for fresh produce (if needed) and the rest of the food must come from what was purchased at the end of January. This $20 will be taken out of the bank in cash to help hold us more accountable. Since I like to have fresh produce to snack on and accompany dinner, this seemed like a fair compromise to not spending at all - and we will still be saving $420 on groceries. 

Rules for our no spend month include: 

1. Any extracurricular activities must come from excess funds (babysitting, refereeing, selling stuff on facebook/craigslist etc. - we currently have two events planned for February that were on the calendar before the no spend initiative so this should be interesting)
2. Any gifts must be purchased with previously held gift cards (since we don't celebrate Valentine's day this shouldn't be too hard)
3. No traveling outside of a 30 mile radius 
4. Clean out closets (sell/donate all unnecessary items)
5. NO EATING OUT (unless funded by the aforementioned extracurricular fund)
6. Anything we "need" gets put on a list for next month (to be re-evaluated the first week of March)

I'll be doing a whole post with my meal planning process later this week but as a sneak preview - here's everything we've got to work with based on my last big grocery trip... 

Dinner

Ginger Garlic Chicken

Pot Roast with Veggies

Sesame Corn Chicken

Balsamic Chicken with Brussel sprouts

Orange Chicken w/ Peppers

Roasted Squash & Chicken

Pulled Pork (for sliders & enchiladas)

Red Beans & Rice

Chili

Taco Soup

Buritto Bowls

Meatball Subs

Tacos

Penne & Red Sauce

*All the chicken dishes are served with Rice or noodles

Lunch 

Lean Cuisines 

Sandwiches 

Oatmeal

Waffles

Quesadillas

Hamburgers (I buy the frozen pre cooked patties from HEB - surprisingly delicious)

Fruit Smoothies

Breakfast

HEB Donuts

Frozen Waffles

Toaster Strudels

Instant Oatmeal

Frozen Pancakes (I pre made a bunch this weekend & froze them into individual servings)

Snacks

Cliff Bars

Smoothies

Fresh Fruit

Fruit Popsicles (no sugar added)

Chips

So there you have it - our start to a "No Spend Month..." wishes of luck and lots of prayers are always welcome... as are words of wisdom from any no spend veterans out there.