Well here we are... November is almost over... so is the experiment!
I will share, Saturday morning, the final colored calendar but I would like to share my reflections so far as I am already preparing for December and next year.
This no spend November or no spend month as been very interesting in making me realize that, basically, I suck at making a budget! All those years of keeping a budget, not following a budget, calculating my budget 4 times a month and getting in financial troubles... always getting out of them but still... unnecessary stress I think!
I can do better.... much better and I will.
I am good a budgeting for rent and utilities... Not so much for food and the money we spend in coffee shop! And completely null when it comes to unexpected stuff - like car maintenance and repair, replacing damaged beyond repair clothes or other stuff... and non-realistic about what we like to spend our money on! That changed over the year from spending on stuff to spending on experiences but still spending. And we are OK with that.
We are not people to save money... we have it, we spend it! It's an energy, it needs to move! And we do have retirement funds so spending what is left is not so much a problem in a way... but we have goals, dreams and we want to make these come true.
So, moving forward, I will do the following to ensure our budget reflects our actual lifestyle and ensure we can achieve long term goals too!
One thing I have learn over the time, and that this month has confirmed, is that we are not good at restraining ourselves too much... and if we forbid each other from spending money, we'll want to spend it more! Therefore we need to reach an equilibrium!
From now on, I have created in my bullet journal, a page for each month (like in the above picture - I have completed it after I took the picture, I am just not comfortable sharing all our numbers) and will use it to track our spending. It will greatly help establishing trends and see where everything goes as well as insure we get it on with number 4), 5) and 6) below! I have a color for budgeted items, a color for authorized expenses for the month (like Christmas related expenses in December), a color for items we had not planned for but have no choice (like emergency dentist appointment) and a color for money we spend but we could and should have done without - like buying an extra pair of jeans.
1) Track money spend on food - I already mentioned that my food budget includes everything bought at the grocery store and health stores - toilet paper, soap, shaving blades, toothbrush, feminine product, etc... so I have to account for those in my budget! I am pretty on target about how much food I buy but I need to either leave room for those toiletries in my budget or starve when I need to buy all of them on the same month!
2) We are coffee shop fans! Currently Starbucks, as the choice where we live is quite limited, but we love to spend time in coffee shops in general, drink coffee/tea and read... We have been doing this for years and even though we recently slowed down and are doing more of it in the comfort of our cozy home, we will always be doing that. As I said, we had recently, at the beginning of 2018, halved our budget for such expenditure and in November I tried cutting it further 40% but it has shown to be too much... a further cut of 20% is what we can live with. We have now establish that!
3) We will also both have an allowance. This way, we can spend money as we wish without having to do a family reunion and discussion/negotiation... and so on... It is a fair amount that will makes us both happy and also allow us to reach our objectives in a decent amount of time. This money will not appear in my tracking of expenditure - it is discretionary money and needs to remain so. We can do whatever we want with it - save it, spend it... it doesn't matter.
4) We will expedite paying our credit card - there is a small amount on it currently but we will make this priority number one with estimated balance to 0$ by the end of January 2019!
5) We will start to seriously work on an emergency fund. This should take care of unplanned expenses eventually. We want our emergency fund to be 3 months of expenses - including a little extra... We should have it by the end of 2019.
6) Once we have all that covered, we will start saving for our big project which is happening in more or less 4 years - this will give us more then enough time to get enough money aside for this dream we have to come true!
I know we can do this if my husband and I work as a team! We have come so far and already did quite a lot together in other areas of our lives - we can now work on the financial aspect and both working on the same goals will make it so much more easier then if we had different dreams!!!
In conclusion, I am really happy I've put myself through this challenge... There will probably be more non spend months in the near future!
Have you done a no spend month? What did you learn? How do you handle money in your homes?
If you liked what you read, please share... thanks!
Chloe 💜&✌
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