Tip Jar: RECAP No Spend January Challenge

It’s February 1st, which means the NO SPEND JANUARY challenge is officially complete. Today I’m sharing a recap of the challenge – some of the successes and some of the failures/updates that need to be addressed. I might even extend this into February and March, which are two more months where there isn’t much going on and we should utilize this in order to save BIG TIME

I know I mentioned this before, but summer can get crazy and the budget is even more difficult to figure out. The kids are home, spending ticks up a little bit – i.e. grocery budget increase, pool maintenance, having family and friends over, cookouts, parties and going to parks, on little trips, etc! These winter months are the perfect time to try to save as much as we can to make up for a variable summer.

No Spend January will definitely be a new thing around here going forward. It certainly was a challenge, but it was totally worth it.

No Spend January Recap

What we were able to discover from this challenge:

That we are capable of saving a lot more than we previously estimated
We were able to identify ”pain points” – we could easily see the areas that were prohibiting us from staying within budget
We identified there is NO need to be paying for items out of convenience all the time – huge waste of money in service fees when we are perfectly capable of doing things outselves
Preparing for things ahead of time and meal planning save lots of money (i.e. packing lunches or snacks when out of the house for a while)
Eating out can be cut back big time – lunch/dinner out is expensive!
Any savings can be put into an emergency fund or into a savings account to help us pay cash for any short term goals (i.e. new car, school tuition, etc.)

We also found during these no spend months, we should be able to comfortably save 27% (30% if we don’t have anything unexpected pop up) of our income into savings/emergency fund. Our original goal for 22 in ’22 was to save 12% each month – that’s crazy how far off I was basing on previous month spending. Mint has been extremely helpful giving us an up close and detailed review of our budget.

A Look at the month

I am proud to say we only ate out TWICE this month! McDonald’s drive thru run for the boys and a family dinner night after having a crummy weekend (we needed to treat the kiddos).

No clothing was purchased, no Amazon purchases – only purchases that were made were home/school necessities.

No coffee runs were made – this was super tough, but it shows I am perfectly capable of making my own coffee/lattes at home.

Grocery budget and meal planning SUCCESS – we had a home cooked meal nearly every day this month. I only went $5 over on groceries – that’s a major success!