More Money Podcast - 140 Listener Series - Why You Should Try Out a No Spend Challenge

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

Looking for some inspiration to get your spending under control? There's no better time than the present to try something new, like a no spend challenge. That's why I'm chatting with two of my podcast listeners for this episode, so they can share their experience and tips on how to save money and conquer their bad spending habits by doing a no spend challenge. Long description: For my first Listener Series episode for Season 6, I've got not one, but two podcast listeners on the show to share their experience and tips for doing a no spend challenge. Michaela and Dan are a couple, engaged and saving up for their wedding, and they got the idea to try out a no spend challenge by seeing someone do something similar on Instagram. Feeling like they never truly knew where they money was going, they embarked on this no spend challenge that would mean they could only spend money on their essentials, and try to live as frugally as possible. Their hope was that it would help them reign in their spending and focus their spending on this that really mattered to them in life. They also wanted to stop the endless cycle of consumerism that so many of us or on (and feel like we can't get off). Well, they successfully did the challenge for a month, and now have continued to practice living below their means, saving the extra income, and just living a life that's not as focused on spending and buying new stuff. After talking with them, it definitely inspired me to reign in my own personal spending and do my own version of a no spend month. For all of January, my husband and I have been making all of our meals at home (save for one lunch that cost us $30) and have not bought any alcohol (though I did buy one beer with a friend, but I'd made those plans back in December!). Like Michaela and Dan, we realized that not spending all of our money on going out to eat or buying beer and wine for our home like we regularly do, hasn't actually affected our happiness at all. Instead, we replaced those two big spending habits with other things, like cooking healthy meals at home, and swapping alcohol for lemon water, tea or coffee. If you want to embark on something similar, I highly recommend doing a no spend challenge or your own, or signing up to my free Rich & Fit Detox. It's a free 5-day email challenge that shows you how to do a health detox, practice self-care, stop mindless spending and declutter your home. For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/140 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 140 of the Mominy Podcast. I am your host, Jessica Morehouse, and you are listening to another listener series episode. And in case you're new to my podcast, you have no idea what I'm talking about. I started this listener series part of my podcast maybe a year ago, maybe a bit more. And it was just a way to feature listeners of the podcast because I started just getting all these emails from listeners sharing their personal finance journeys, sharing their successes, their failures, some really great stories and experiences. I'm like, you know what, you know who would benefit from all this information, all these stories, other listeners

of the show. I need to share these. And so I developed this listener series where I then reached out to these people again to see if they want to share it in depth on the podcast. And it's been pretty awesome, quite honestly. I love the listener series. Not only is it great, because some of these stories are just absolutely inspiring and motivating. And it's just so interesting knowing what everyone else is doing with their money and not just, you know, all these other guests that I usually have, you know, authors and experts and all that stuff. I want to know what, you know, people that are not, you know, living and breathing money

all the time, what are they doing with their money? So I've got a really great episode with two listeners of my podcast, Michelle and Dan. They are a couple and they embarked on a no spend challenge and they wanted to share what exactly that is, how it helped them with their finances and really help them figure out what their values were, what's their why, and just like really go deep with their money. And then they kind of discovered a bunch of other things about their life in the process, which I think is so awesome. Definitely makes me think about maybe doing one of these challenges myself. But well, actually, you know

what? Actually, I might just do that. You know why? Because recently, me and my business partner, Jacqueline Phillips, who is a champion bodybuilder and has recently, seriously, she's a cover girl on Inside Fitness. So if you're like at a bookstore or I don't know, anywhere they sell magazines, try to find a copy of Inside Fitness. She's the cover right now. Anyma who. So, you know, if you are aware, you may not be, but we launched the Rich and Fit Bootcamp back in June and launched it again in September. And then we launched it once again for the last time in January, the beginning of January. And now it's an evergreen course. You can sign up to do the Rich and Fit Bootcamp whenever you like.

But beyond that, we also made a free five-day challenge that we called the Rich and Fit Detox. So we knew that some people just want kind of a quick thing to kind of kickstart, changing some of their habits. And detox, well, she knew how to do kind of the physical fitness detox where you really start focusing on what you're eating, doing self-care, doing yoga and all that kind of stuff, meditation. And for me, I'm like, okay, well, what's kind of a detox for the money side of things? Well, it's very much like this no spend challenge. And so if this sounds interesting to you and you want to do something that's only five days, but it'll kind of kickstart you to kind of changing and swapping out some of your bad habits for some better habits.

Go to richandfit.co slash detox or jessicamoorehouse.com slash detox. And you can sign up and take it. Okay. Well, that is enough yabbering from me. Let's get to that episode with Mishayla and Dan. Thank you, Mishayla and Dan, for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you so much for having us. I am so excited to chat with you. I'm so glad that you reached out by email and had, you know, shared your experience with me about your no spend challenge that you

did very recently, like I guess, you know, in the past month or so, and you're still going to continue it with which I think is really cool. So before we kind of talk about what exactly that looks like, what inspired you to do something like that? Go ahead. Well, every month I just kept looking at my bank account and realizing that I wasn't able or wasn't saving as much as I thought I should be. And I couldn't figure it out. I tried like the envelope system with Dan and each month we are just coming up short. Yeah, kind of along those lines, like I feel like we exhausted a lot of different options.

I mean, we were stashing money away here and stashing money away there and opening different savings accounts. But really at the end of the month when we kind of looked at everything, there was still unexplained spending that we just didn't really know where it went. So the tracking of it was really kind of what I bought into. Yeah. So did you, I guess, previously not really track your money?

You thought you had an idea of what was going on, but you didn't track it with a spreadsheet and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. We would try for a month or so tracking. And then we would either kind of fall off the wagon with that or something would happen that I wouldn't like want to write down. Like I would go to TJ Maxx and spend way more than I had thought. And I wouldn't want to put that in the spreadsheet. So I kind of was self sabotsabotaging in that way. That's interesting. Yeah. Cause I found like this past year, me and my husband have been tracking our spending very diligently. And I'd say the one thing that he really struggled with was revealing all those

purchases that he wasn't necessarily proud of, or, you know, he'd be like, I know I shouldn't have bought that, but I did. And it's there. So yeah, and I think that's probably a big struggle because it's like tracking your spending isn't that hard, but it's the emotional and like going really deep about it. That's kind of the hard part. Reveal like you are kind of like, you know, people have said like getting financially naked. Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like.

You're like, ah, people know what I spend my money on. It's hard. Even if you're just sharing it with someone you're very close to. I kind of found that a lot of the tracking, like you were saying, it's easy to track the $10, $20, $30 purchases because they kind of come across as like, oh, no, that was, we went to Target and we got clothes. Or, oh, that was grocery store. For me, a lot of it was just like the real

like five seven eight nine like those little ones that just you're like wait a second like i know we went to target and i know we went and had to get you know pet food but where did that like that 50 like disappear to and then that was a lot of the you know the frivolous spending and buying that we were doing now typically like how do like how do you spend money? Like how, like do you use your debit card visa or like credit card cash? Like what is kind of your way of spending money? Yeah, we, I've always put things on my credit card and then at the end of the week or the end of the month, I would pay them off. So all my purchases always go on my credit card. We tried doing the cash envelope system for a little bit to get a better understanding of where our money was going.

And we kept that up for about a month and a half, but we didn't stick with that one. What did you find? Like, why do you feel like that didn't really work for you guys? I think a lot of it was just sort of the discipline and kind of the planning, the advanced planning of like, well, we need an envelope for this. We need an envelope for that. And it just seemed to be like a little bit more in-depth, I think, than I think at that point we were kind of ready for. And trying to categorize what some of those purchases would go into. Right. Because I know there was a spending envelope, but then I would be like, well, does this necessarily count as entertainment spending or does this count as birthday spending?

Trying to figure out where it went. And did you like typically like for me, i like the idea and the concept of it i know it does work for a lot of people but for me i just don't like using cash like kind of like you i use my credit card or my debit card for purchases so using cash it just kind of adds an extra layer of work and i find it a bit of a hassle yeah i mean i would like if i would like to use more cash i use my debit card really for everything um and you know it's tied in so i can you know pay out my bills and pay everything like through my phone like immediately like most people do but um i mean i think i like the idea of maybe

kind of down the road after we get a little bit more structure and this like maybe setting aside like it's just a different envelope system for like like stashing money away for travel or for like entertainment but i think the carrying like the carrying of the envelopes and like michelle was saying like going into a grocery store and pulling from that and then having to go well this is technically this is like the pet pet store category i don't know it's just a little bit much yeah definitely so uh so where did you get the idea to i guess you know it sounds like you kind of tried a lot of different things you knew there was a problem you wanted to find a solution so you kind of dabbled in a couple different uh ways to do it what uh kind of got you interested in doing a no spend challenge

because for me like that sounds that does sound quite difficult to like not spend money when you're so used to just, you know, swiping and spending your money freely. Yeah, I actually got the idea off of Instagram. Oh, really? I was looking at one of the girls I follow and I was going pretty far back on some of her pictures and she was talking about a no spend month and it got me really interested. She posted every day of her no spend month, kind of like alternatives to spending. So I went through and read all 30 of them. And then I approached Dan and I was like, Hey, what do you think about the no spend month? It would be a great way to save some money and kind of see where we're spending money that we

don't think we are. Yeah. So I guess what does a no spend month look like? Because obviously you have to spend money to live. So what does it really mean that you're not spending your money on? Yeah. So we kind of came up with a set of rules for the month. We were allowed essentials and we kind of categorized that as our bills, gas, food. We did put a cap on our food. We did $60 a week, so $240 for the month. And then we do have a lot of pets. We have three dogs and two cats. So yeah, we run a little zoo here. So we were, yeah, we allowed, of course, their food and medical bills and all of that. And so you were able to do your no spend month. You did it in November successfully. Did you find that you were able to kind of stick to it? Yeah, we actually we say we were we were very like the main thing that I think really caught my eye was sort of the idea of challenging. Like, is it possible to stay within sixty dollars a week for groceries?

Because a lot of time we talked about this. We would go to a grocery store and spend like, you know, like 80 bucks, 70 bucks, 80, 90 for groceries for the week. And then on top of that like we each make a couple of runs be like oh we need this or oh we need that and so the idea of being like sticking at 240 for the month was really the main for me like really the main rule that part and then just sticking to um paying bills and and the essentials i mean that outside of the house entertainment i mean i think we keep ourselves pretty busy here but the house entertainment, I mean, I think we keep ourselves pretty busy here, but those are the two main things that I think we did the best on. Absolutely. And I think a ton of people spend a good portion of their money on groceries. And

I mean, believe me, I've, you know, as we've been like tracking ourselves and me and my husband, I'm like, how the heck do we spend so much money on groceries? So what, how did you, how were you able to do it? Cause that's doesn't, that sounds like a very strict budget for groceries. How were you able to stay within that? Like, what did you have to change to make that work for you? So, um, a couple of, a couple of key things that we started doing was really, we were kind of pre-planning our meals. So, uh, generally like we would do our, you know,

like most people do our grocery shopping on, um, like a Saturday or Sunday or whatever. And so in advance, we kind of would just plan out like the five or six meals in advance and, and put down what exactly we were going to be needing for those. Um, so that's where it started. And so we'd have like a five day kind of meal prep. And then along with that, um, planning, whatever we made, making extra of it so that we wouldn't have to go to like a, you know, fast food or whatever for lunch. So we'd have the leftovers. So really like making a meal that would last for like a day and a half. It's sort of kind of what we started with. Um, and then we did,

we actually did a pretty good job of going around to a lot of the different grocery stores here and sort of like um looking at what their prices were um where we could get the most bang for our buck and also that led us getting into like bulk shopping um yeah just i mean those were kind of the key finds We ate a lot of kind of like basic foods for the month. So a lot of versions of like rice, beans and veggies, pastas. We started to make a lot of our own things like sweets and granolas and anything that we could make cheaper than we could buy. We both follow a plant based diet. So a lot of the meals were things that we're used to eating already.

When you cut out the meat, it helps a lot. Yeah. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Yeah, so I was going to mention too, because in general, what people don't really think about, not only can you save a ton of money by

making your own meals, but it's generally healthier because there's, you have all those whole foods, you know, what's in there, there's no preservatives and stuff. So you're saying that you actually, you're also vegetarian. So you're able to do that. So that's really interesting because I feel like a lot of people think that it's, you know, oh, you'd have to buy all those kind of extras because there's all those kind of different variations like, oh, you want chicken? Here's a vegetarian chicken for you or whatever. So I would love to kind of know like what, yeah, what did some of your meals look like? Because it sounds like they're very like affordable, but also really healthy. Yeah, well, we try. So one night would be like brown rice, steamed veggies, some sort of bean and then a sauce. So a lot of like stir fry type meals.

We love pasta and pasta sauce. We made a lot of our own like veggie burgers out of sweet potatoes and black beans. We did like a lot of kind of flavored rice by by um by using like our leftover vegetables for like a homemade vegetable stock and then we did like we kind of did our own we did a really one night we made a really nice like pasta using actual like pumpkin puree that we had just an extra leftover pumpkin and so we just little things like that just sort of taking the time to you know instead of like that's one of the really good example of that's one of those things where you're like okay we're gonna need some some uh veggie stock for the rice or veggie stock for soup and instead of like running out and being like okay i need a couple of boxes of it

like for three or four bucks we just made our. And the same thing with like the pasta sauce, you know, we just use the pumpkin puree for, for a pasta sauce. And, you know, that's it right there. It saves like a trip to the store where in the past I'd be like, Oh, we're going to get veggie broth. And then I come home with like a couple of kombuchas, some cookies and like five or six other things. And that's, you know, a $12 spend right there. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, just a little ingenuity and kind of just thinking in advance, I think. And I guess just changing your habits too because I feel like a lot of, just even thinking to me, I'm like, you know,

me and my husband have been talking about meal planning for a year and sometimes we were really good at it and sometimes we just get off the, you know, fall off the bandwagon, like you said, and just couldn't stick to it. So what is your kind of, what are your kind of tips for like trying to stick to that kind of regimen and changing some of your habits of always going to the store and last minute planning

um i think just kind of having a good idea like just communicating yeah i mean just talking about like all right what are we going to know what what realistically are we going to look at for this week's meals like what sounds good um what do we know is going to be cost efficient as well as like have enough um to get us through like a dinner and the lunch um and then being able to just kind of like figure out you know how to spice it up a little bit you know like and you started to convince somebody that having like brown rice a couple days out of the week for meals and dinner and lunch isn't gonna i mean that doesn't sound very yeah yeah exactly but finding ways to like spice it up with like you know like i guess using

different spices and different types of combinations of vegetables. I mean, that was one thing that, you know, that I think that we really did well on because Michelle has been she's been vegan for a lot longer than I have. And so she added her own kind of planning in advance and taking the time to like, you know, to think, think ahead, you know, looking down the looking down the line at more like, okay, how's, how's this going to help us be beneficial, like not only financially, but also also nutritiously. There was one like Friday night when we're eating quinoa and lentils with pasta sauce. And I'm just like, Oh, I just want taco bell. I just want a bean burrito. Like, and then reminding myself why we were doing the challenge and why we were meal prepping and the goals that we were setting with that makes a little bit easier when you can come back to your why. Yeah, totally. Oh, I'd love to talk about your why. So yeah, because we didn't really touch on your why. But I assume that is a big reason. A big motivator too, is like always going back to

like, why are we doing this? Because otherwise, you know, you'll probably be able to do this no spend challenge for a month and then go back to your old ways. But you've mentioned that you want to continue on this for some months to come. So let's kind of go back to like, what did you figure out was your why for doing this? I think it's kind of evolved actually throughout the challenge. So I got pretty big on minimalizing a little bit before the challenge and trying to live a slower and more simple lifestyle. So before the challenge, we had already started to kind of cut back on some of our spending and entertainment. So my why was that I want to be a more conscious consumer and a more ethical consumer and kind of make sure that the companies I'm supporting, I also support their

morals and kind of reducing that environmental impact as well. So the environment and kind of moral ethical standards have been my why in this process. And then living a simpler, simpler, more meaningful life with Dan. And we're also getting married, which is a great motivator to want to save some money. I bet it is. Yeah, I think, I mean, i would agree with for me it just sort of started out with the main the main idea was just you know the the dollar um amount and just kind of figuring out

like how i could cut out you know 50 100 150 dollars a month um and and this kind of seemed like a good way of start a place to start, um, by, you know, tracking what we were spending our money on. But like, as Michelle said, it kind of, as we were going along, it sort of led to, um, you know, exploring new avenues and like bulk shopping or, um, finding new ways to, you know, use what we have, like the veggie stock or the pumpkin. And so, yeah, yeah sort of you just evolved into different things that kind of came about and then I'd say ultimately like right now

it's more about um being thoughtful like with what I'm spending money on and what we're spending money on and why we're saving it as opposed to just kind of like thoughtlessly spending every time you go into a grocery store or wherever for a couple of items, you know, it's like, oh, this looks good. This looks good. This looks good. When you really don't even need that. It's just you needed a couple things and you end up walking out with way more than you needed because it looked good. Absolutely.

Totally. So what would your advice be for anyone who's like listening now? They're like, yeah, okay. That sounds like something I totally want to try out. What would be kind of the first steps for someone to take to, to try their own kind of no spends challenge? I think, I mean, identifying, first of all, identifying what your essentials, what you have to spend money on would be the first place to start.

You know, for us, it's always going to, you know, you always have to do the bills and all that, but then essentially what, like what your essentials are to, you have to spend on each month and then what a realistic budget for a grocery would be for us. It just, you know, but we kind of looked at the $240 and thought that, you know, it was a good enough number that it would be a challenge to do it, but also it was doable. So maybe starting with those two spots. I think having an accountability partner is a big thing. I think if I was doing it alone, it would have been a lot

harder to stick with it because no one would have known if I didn't. So I think having someone to kind of hold you accountable and then also knowing why you're doing it, because it's great to save money, but for me that wouldn't have been enough because it hadn't worked in the past. So I needed something more than just saving money. And those are kind of the two things that kept, kept me going and then to also plan um I did break the no spend challenge once it was my niece's birthday and I completely spaced buying

a present in October for it so I did break it to get her a birthday present um but I made sure to buy it from like a company that I wanted to support. So to plan as well, because you don't want to run into a birthday or something like that, that you do want to give a gift for not be able to. Yeah. And I guess don't beat yourself up if you don't do it perfectly. If you slip up once or twice, just kind of like, you know, anything in life, it's like, you don't have to do it perfectly to still get those really great results at the end, but don't be. And even if you decide to do a no spend entertainment month, like you're going to see the benefits, even if you just do one category of no spend.

It's kind of nice as a side note is we had mentioned it to quite a few people that we were taking on this challenge. And so we did have people that, you know, would invite us out to go eat and, and knew that we were doing in those spins November and they were like, Oh, we'll get this. We got it. And so we were very grateful. My mom, my mom treated us one day and we were like, thank you. I love that. That is so funny. Well, I, yeah, I love what you said, Michelle, about the accountability partner. Cause absolutely. I feel like, I don't know if I'd be able to do

this alone, but I feel like if I had some friends kind of like a book club, but like a no sped club or something, that would be a lot more motivating and kind of fun to do. Exactly. And we got some of our friends involved. So then I didn't want to tell them if like we slipped up, there was no way I got competitive. So I was like, there's, there's no way we can give up now because I know people are checking in and I know other of people are doing it as well with us. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. I love, I love this. I think this is a, a really awesome. I awesome. I'm excited to share this episode with people to motivate them, especially when this episode is going to air in January, when most people, I think, are looking for a program to undo some of the damage they did in December. So I think this is awesome. Yeah, exactly. We were able to save about $700 too. Wow. Yeah.

We were pretty shocked when we got the numbers. And then we were like, oh my gosh, if we had done this every month, think how much money we would have. Yeah. So I guess how long do you foresee you kind of doing this or at least a version of this? Is this just like you want this just to be integrated?

Like this is your kind of normal now. Like it's not really a challenge anymore. This is just like what you want to carry forward. I think we both agreed like we definitely want to carry it forward with a few modifications. Like, I mean, we were pretty diligent about like the no, I mean, we didn't eat out. We, you know, made stuff go, you know, at home. So, and I think it would be nice to, you know, I'd like to go out a few times a month and then, you know, take Michelle out and go kind of do a couple of dinners out.

So that's something that we're, you know, we're talking about, like figuring out when we, how to work that in. And, but the grocery bill, I think the grocery thing is something that we really kind of want to continue to challenge ourselves on and um you know see where it goes from there yeah we value our date nights yeah and we were having them too often before or always spending money we do value them so we are going to bring back the version of that might include

going out to dinner or a movie but not doing it excessively like we were beforehand but i do want to add this like it was it was nice though because we were doing meals at home and planning our meals in advance um the big thing was like it allowed us time to spend more time to spend together you know because we were both in there like making dinner or or going to the grocery store together um so I mean it was nice it is nice to be able to do that you know to be able to like sit down and have a meal at home and I you know I think there's lots of people that you know that I don't think that happens as much as it used to so it's nice to be able to just kind of spend that that quality time doing something constructive i don't totally it's brought you closer together it sounds like exactly yeah it has i didn't think that was

possible but it has and um it's going to help us learn new ways to cope with things because beforehand we were using shopping and spending money as entertainment and learn new ways to cope with things because beforehand we were using shopping and spending money as entertainment and as a way to cope with stress. And we've kind of had to learn different ways that might include going for a walk or reading a book or even watching a show. It's made us a lot more creative in that aspect. Totally. Totally.

Well, thank you, Michelle and Dan for taking the time to chat with me and sharing about your no spend challenge. I know you're going to kind of motivate, inspire some people to kind of, to try and do it themselves. Maybe even myself. I like to try to do it. I know, I know. Like I've tried to do them before, but maybe I'll, I'll try, I'll try again. Maybe I'll try to get my husband more involved. And that's kind of the secret sauce. Yeah.

Or just bypass your husband and go for your friends. Yeah, that's true. Well, thank you again for chatting with me. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Have a great night. And that was episode 140 of the Mo Money Podcast. Make sure to check out the show notes at jessicamarales.com slash 140 for some more information about what we talked about and some important links that you may want to check out, including the thing that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the Rich and Fit

Detox is a free five-day fitness and finance detox that me and my business partner, Jacqueline Phillips, who's a champion bodybuilder and the current Inside Fitness cover girl. We developed it over kind of the Christmas holidays as something to help people kickstart kind of their new year, but also help them kind of replace some of their bad habits with some better habits. So if you want to kind of, you know, you're feeling kind of tired and maybe you got the winter blues. I definitely have some of that myself. And you feel like you're just, your spending is out of control and you just need some guidance. You just need some help. This might be the thing that will help you out. Just go to jessicamorris.com slash detox to get some more details and to sign up again is free. It's a free

five day email challenge. And there's a whole video library of kind of self care techniques and workouts, a lot of really, really, really good stuff. So make sure to check that out. I also mentioned the rich and fit bootcamp. So we reopened, we opened up the doors. So if you want something a little bit more intense, if you really want to start getting fit, you really want to tackle your finances once and for all and create a really solid foundation for your finances, this is the thing that will get you there. And it's all about doing fitness and finance at the same time, really creating a lifestyle that you can maintain after the program. So you can find out more details about that at richandfitbootcamp.com. All right,

that is it for me, but I will be back here next Wednesday with another episode. And again, highly recommend that you check out, well, not check out, but you subscribe to my email list because there's so many things going on, so many projects, so many awesome, cool things I've got in the queue. I don't want you to miss a thing. But I can't always share them on the podcast because sometimes I record these in advance, guys. So if you want to make sure you don't miss a thing, go to jessicanrose.com slash subscribe. Get on my email newsletter list and yeah, see what I've got going on, which is a bunch of stuff, a bunch of things. Okay, enough chatting, enough chatting. I will see you back here next Wednesday for a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast.

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