“No-Sugar August” Meets No-Spend Week
Some years ago, I did a “no-sugar August” along with some friends on Facebook. We all tried to avoid sugar as much as possible during the month, and support each other in a group I set up for camraderie.
In so many ways I hated that month, because I have a big sweet tooth! It was hard to give up eating– and baking–some favorite treats. But there was some “good fruit” (pun intended) that came out of the month:
- it helped re-set my sweet tooth.
- I learned all the processed foods that are not necessarily sweet treats, but that have a lot of sugar in them. I learned how to make homemade alternatives to some of these items.
- the month helped me create some good alternatives to ice cream every day. (It was summer, after all.)
- the monthlong time frame made it relatively easy to stick with. “No sugar forever” would have not worked well for me, or most people.
- the group support helped keep me (and others) accountable to maintaining the no-sugar promise.
After the month was over, I went back to eating desserts and treats, but less often and with better habits in place. It was a good “re-set.”
[Now, living through these pandemic times, the prospect of a no-sugar month sounds dreadful. Maybe a week? Probably not right now…. But I digress…]
This week’s challenge is to track or restrict your spending for one week. But that kind of challenge looks different in a pandemic time. Let’s explore.
This week’s HEALTH Challenge: Have a no-spend week (or track your spending carefully for one week).
As I’ve said, I devised these weekly challenges last fall, months before we knew life would change so much. Yet there is still value in considering these challenges, perhaps with some adjustments based on current conditions.
So, for instance, beefing up your emergency fund can happen at any time, but it is especially important now.
Finding ways to save on your grocery spending can be a good idea, but perhaps not as much as in normal times, as we are all eating at home so much more.
Putting together a list of 100 dreams will be big on things that can be accomplished “in the future” since we do not know what travel–a typical category of dreams– will look like in the near future.
This week’s challenge is to be mindful of your spending.
Being very detailed about spending for a time, and/or restricting what you spend money on, can be informative and useful for making future changes. You can understand not only where your money goes, but in what areas you find it harder to cut back. The no-spend week is not necessarily to save money, though that is a nice bonus—it is set some better patterns in spending going forward.
But that is going to look different during a pandemic than it would during “normal” times.
Many people are spending much, much less in key budget areas, from eating out, to transportation, to (of course) travel.
Take gas, for instance. Here is what YNAB (You Need a Budget) tells me our familly spent on gas so far this year:
January: $210
February: $212
March: $121
April: $63
Gas prices did go down, but not by this much. Without even trying, we cut our gas budget to one-third of its normal level! And we are not alone–most of us have been able to save money without too much effort. That makes a no-spend week less compelling. But here are a few ways to modify a no-spend week to pandemic times:
Ideas on How to Adjust a No-Spend Week to Pandemic Times
- write down all spending for a week, categorize it, then reflect.
- learn about the ways that others have handled no-spend time periods.
- consider ways to make some of the “forced frugality” we are all experiencing more permanent.
*write down all spending for a week; categorize; then reflect.
One of the best tools for people when they are trying to eat healthier is to track everything they eat for a certain amount of time.
Keeping track of what one is eating helps people manage diabetes; and helps people be more successful in losing weight. There is certainly no dearth of apps and tools to support this practice.
We all have some mindless eating patterns (hello sugar) that benefit from tracking. In the same way, we all have some mindless–or less than optimal– spending. Tracking or pausing the spending for a short time can help “re-set” our normal.
We have used YNAB for several years, and while it is not perfect, it is pretty great. It is certainly better than anything else I have tried. With YNAB, we can synchronize our spending, and then analyze how much we spend in different categories. (That’s how I was able to see at a glance how much we spent in gas in recent months.)
But you can just as easily use pen and paper, or a notes app on your phone or computer–for a week–to track spending.
*learn about the ways that others have handled no-spend periods.
There’s been a small book genre of no-spend periods—typically a year–and the author’s experiences and transformation. Here are a few to consider requesting from the library or reading up on:
The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store by Cait Flanders.
The subtitle accurately and pretty completely describes the book. Flanders writes well of her experience with overdrinking, overspending, and other unhealthy patterns. Her no-spend year was easier in some ways because she was an individual, but she gives a lot of good ideas for making it work for anyone.
Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home & Life by Joshua Becker.
This short e-book is not about a no-spending challenge time. Rather, it is about minimalism and reducing the number of things we own so as to live a richer life. Becker’s story, and his family life before and after minimizing, is instructive especially for families. I am not a huge fan of the entire minimalism trend and spokespeople in general (though I do have a soft spot for Marie Kondo), but Becker is an exception. This would be a good read to help get someone in a mindset to stop adding items to their lives.
The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen.
I still remember the effect The Power of Half had on me when I first read it a decade ago. This father-daughter duo recount how their family decided to give away half of their possessions and downsize so as to be more generous to local and international charity. Now that our libraries are open for curbside service, I will probably re-read this one and see if it stands up.
[A side note: the equivalent food book to the no-spending challenges recounted above: Year of No Sugar by Eve Schaub. A fascinating book–much more restrictive than most people could handle.]
*consider ways to make some of the pandemic-forced frugality changes more permanent.
If, like most people, your spending is far lower than normal, take some time this week to plan a few ways that you can make some of these involuntary budget cuts more permanent:
*rethink the number of vehicles you have at your house. Could you do with one less, saving the insurance, gas, and other costs associated?
*consider eating out more as a “treat” that it once was, instead of an often as most families are accustomed to. We are all going to enjoy going out to actual restaurants again once this is all over. But making some home meals more special–since most of us have improved and expanded our cooking repertoire–is a worthy goal.
*explore the option of working from home more (or entirely). One of the biggest changes post-pandemic will be flexibility offered by employers for work-from-home. This can offer cost savings to both the employer and the employee.
Do you have other ideas of ways to continue some of the pandemic-era savings into a post-pandemic time?
