The Life on a Dime household did participate in no-spend February and Minimalism in March, despite the glaring lack of activity on the blog or its social media. This post will serve as a super quick update for both.
2024 NO SPEND FEBRUARY UPDATE
Rule One: Limited Eating Out – We limited ourselves to going out only twice in February. Looking back, we went out exactly three times according to our checking account statement! So that’s not far off. We spent a total of $137 dining out.
Rule Two: Reduced Grocery Expenses – The idea was not to make more than one grocery run a week and to cut back on prepared (deli or to-go) food, processed snacks, and convenience packaged produce and salad mixes. We spent a total of about $940 on groceries, which isn’t terrible, but it wasn’t much of a decrease from previous months. I’m not too upset about this one.
Rule Three: No Clothes or Other Shopping – We spent $40 at Harbor Freight on something that probably wasn’t necessary, but the hubs wanted it anyway. We also spent an additional $65 or so helping out with nieces’ fundraising efforts, namely Girl Scout cookies and frozen cinnamon roll dough for NJHS.
Both fundraiser expenses counted as grocery expenses.
SO HOW’D WE DO?: I have tallied our savings totals for the month, and they were significantly larger than usual, despite the extra expenses at the beginning of the month. The main goal of our no-spend challenge was to reduce our expenses to increase our savings. By the end of the month, we had added $550 to our short-term savings account and $300 to our emergency fund, for a month-end savings total of $850. This is at least twice our typical monthly savings (it may seem small, but our household only has one full-time income), so I can comfortably say that No-Spend February was once again a success.
2024 MINIMALISM IN MARCH
I did declutter quite a bit, which is pretty par for the course any month. I just didn’t keep a record of individual items donated. The only proof I have of participating in the challenge this year is these two photos.
I went through all the kids’ school work and other paper “treasures.” The four bags full of clothing and toys were then donated.
I definitely kept my online presence to a minimum in March. Without getting into details, March was very stressful work-wise (make that March – June really), and I had little desire or inspiration to write. I guess you could call that a successful minimalism challenge.
DID YOU PARTICIPATE IN EITHER CHALLENGE?
If so, how did you do? Were you pretty relaxed about it as I’ve been the last few years? I figure why stress if you achieve the goal just by being a little more conscious of your spending and consumerism/materialism in general?
I can honestly say I am looking forward to the challenges in 2025.