Tag Archives: no spend summer

Unexpected benefits of our cash only budget

cashWhen we decided to live this summer on a cash budget, I was nervous. Not only did I know it would be a challenge, but I feared that we would feel deprived and miserable. Almost three weeks into the experiment, that’s not the case at all. In fact, there have been several unexpected benefits.

Weight loss

After almost 6 months of minimal success with dieting and exercising, I was pleasantly surprised this week to discover I’ve lost three pounds. This could be due to any number of recent lifestyle changes, including my limited bread and pasta consumption over the past 3 weeks. But I also suspect our new lifestyle has a lot to do with it. We’re choosing frugal, more active fun instead of pricier sedentary activities, and we’ve cut out restaurant meals. We didn’t eat out more than once a week before, but apparently that was enough to slow my weight loss down.

Camaraderie

Since my husband and I are facing this challenge as a team, it’s definitely bringing us closer together. It’s been fun discovering frugal alternatives to our more expensive date nights, and we’re working together to solve problems and overcome challenges.

We’ve been living frugally for almost two years, but this is extreme even for us. Spending the evening playing a board game instead of going out to dinner is a great way to reconnect, and it really feels like we’re breaking out of some of our old routines and enjoying a lot of new activities. Fun!

Less budget stress

One of the worst feelings is checking the budget Monday morning after a weekend of overspending. Since we paid off our credit card debt and increased our income a little, we started getting more and more complacent about our frugality. It happens.

This cash only experiment has helped us get back on track. Now when I look at the budget Monday morning, I know exactly what we spent Friday through Sunday. The weekends no longer derail us, because we only have so much in our pockets to spend.

If nothing else, living on cash only really has led to more mindful spending. It’s not necessarily because I put a premium on cash, but because when you only have so much in your pocket, you’re forced to avoid spending more than that. Knowing exactly where we stand at the end of the weekend is incredibly freeing.

Downsides

I miss the occasional lunch out at work. Last Friday the entire office left for lunch at my favorite inexpensive restaurant. Because of my diet and my budget, I ate my boring salad. That was the first and only time I felt a little deprived on cash only.

The biggest downside? Oh my goodness, I hate dealing with cash. I hate having change everywhere. I hate that I have to stop and get myself organized after the cashier hands me my change. I really hate that I have to fish around in my wallet for the correct amount when I pay for things. It seems to hold everything up, and it’s just such a hassle. Holding on to receipts and manually splitting transactions on Mint to track our spending is inconvenient and confusing at times. What do you do, though? It seems a small price to pay considering all the benefits so far.

Photo by nicmcphee

No spend alternatives to our favorite summer activities

summer
Photo by lonebluelady

We’re only in the second week of our no spend summer, and we’ve already hit some challenges and setbacks. Even though we know it’s worth it, limiting our spending has been really tough. It’s a challenge to keep ourselves from feeling deprived and losing motivation.

There are some things that I associate with summer that we’ve had to give up. Because we miss them, we’re thinking of no spend alternatives to the summer activities we love.

Movies and popcorn

What’s summer without blockbusters? Though we sometimes catch a matinee at the cheap theater for $5.50 a ticket, we still miss the fun of the big screen with a bucket of popcorn. Check your city’s events calendar and see if they’re offering free screenings of classic movies. Our city screens family movies in a park every Sunday night for free. If your city doesn’t offer anything like that, add a little extra fun to family movie night by popping homemade popcorn on the stovetop.

Going out for ice cream

Nothing says summer like a trip to the ice cream parlor. But gourmet ice cream parlors are way too pricey, and even Dairy Queen can add up. Instead, drive through any fast food restaurant with a $1 menu and pick up an ice cream cone or a sundae. I don’t usually recommend McDonald’s, but their hot fudge sundaes taste just like Dairy Queen, and they only cost $1.

Lunch on a restaurant patio

One of our favorite weekend activities when the weather is nice is dining outside on a restaurant patio. But part of our no spend summer plan is no restaurant meals, period. If you really want to sit outside and enjoy the weather, pack a lunch and a blanket and head to the park or the beach.

Summer concerts

Ever since I was a teenager, summer meant live concerts. But concert tickets can cost a lot of money. Again, check your city’s events calendar for free live music. Our city presents a band downtown every Friday night of the summer for free. The next best thing for us is listening to an album we haven’t heard in a long time all the way through, start to finish. With today’s iPod culture, a lot of people are missing out on the fun of listening to an entire album. We make it a point to put on music and really listen instead of putting it in the background. If there’s money in the entertainment budget, you can even download something you’ve never heard on iTunes for about $10.

Summer vacation

It really is true that you can get out of town, or at least out of the house, without spending a lot of money. Camping at a state park is a great, inexpensive way to get out of the house. If even camping is a stretch for your budget, look at your city through the eyes of a tourist with a stay-cation. Check out the art and history museums near you. See if there are any national historic sites within driving distance. Even if you have to take a day trip to the nearest metropolitan area, a tank of gas is well worth that vacation feeling without shelling out for hotels and restaurants.

We’re making some serious progress

If you’re following my progress through my progress meters in the sidebar, you may have noticed some changes over the weekend.

Our emergency fund is now over 75% complete! Woo hoo! We’re getting so close! Our Europe fund doesn’t appear to have changed, but it did. I increased our savings goal for Europe to $10,000 since we’re now hoping to take an extended trip.

So how did we make such a sudden jump in our savings? We decided to move the money from our “summer savings” account into our emergency and Europe funds early.

Originally, our plan was to keep the money we’d saved for the summer in its own account until we made it through our no spend summer without needing extra money. Now that it looks like our cash budget will get us through the summer on our tighter budget, I kept looking at that money like it was “free” money. But “free” money is dangerous for me. When I have free money, I start thinking about all the stupid things I can buy with it.

So I went ahead and moved half of it into our emergency fund and half into our Europe fund. It’s still there if we get into trouble later in the summer, but I’ll be a lot more hesitant to pull money from our emergency fund than I would have been with the summer savings account.

Basically, I don’t want to make it easy for us to fail. As long as that safety net was there, the stakes weren’t quite as high for our cash-only budget. But now that I’ve gotten used to a 75% complete emergency fund, I’m going to work extra hard to keep it that way.

Bottom line: the easiest way to save money is to do just that — save it. When money is floating around without a purpose, it’s too tempting to spend it. When you assign it to a specific savings purpose, you’ll be a lot more likely to protect it.

Do you keep extra money in your checking account? If so, I recommend that you move it to a savings account, set a purpose for it, and keep only the money you need to live in your checking account.

Menu Plan: 5/30-6/5

Our first cash grocery trip was a success! We put together a list, and then based on previous shopping trips and current sales I estimated the cost to be sure we were in the right range. I kept track of my individual price estimates for each item on the grocery list, and as we filled our cart I replaced my estimate with the correct price. I was only off for a couple of items, so my estimate was pretty close.

We ended up spending $9 under our $60 budget for a total cost of $51.63. That money will be put aside in our envelope to cover us in future weeks if we have to go over budget or hopefully it will make it to the end of the summer so we can use it for something fun!

I was definitely more mindful of our spending during this shopping trip than I usually am, but I don’t know if that’s because I was using cash or because I’m making an effort to spend less. I had an extra $30 in my pocket for entertainment and household expenses, so I can’t attribute our mindful spending to fear of spending more than we had. But I think knowing that we can’t just swipe our debit cards is making it easier for us to avoid overspending, since we know that this $90 is it for the week.

Kacie brought up a good point when I asked for advice on cash budgeting last week. She said cash budgeting made tracking expenses more difficult for her. Since I use Mint.com to automatically track my spending and budget, this is also an issue for me. My solution is simple: Mint.com allows you to split transactions and categorize them separately. Each week, I’ll save my receipts until our ATM transaction shows up on Mint, then I’ll split that cash withdrawal and categorize it according to our receipts. Whatever doesn’t get spent will remain “Uncategorized,” which means it won’t go into our normal budget. The only problem will be accounting for that extra cash when I spend it later. I’ll let you know if I come up with a solution to add that into our budget. It will only be a problem if I don’t spend it in the same month I withdraw it.

Here’s my $50 lower-carb menu plan for the week:

Saturday: BLT Salad
Sunday: Pork chops and green beans
Monday: Greek chicken salad
Tuesday: Chicken fajita tortilla soup (minus the chicken and tortillas to limit carbs and conserve chicken)
Wednesday: Mexican chicken skillet (Like a Mexican stirfry with peppers, corn, tomatoes, and chicken)
Thursday: Scrambled eggs and bacon (I’m not a big fan of breakfast for dinner, but it sure does save money!)
Friday: Barbecued chicken with corn on the cob

For more menu plans, visit OrgJunkie.

Thoughts on our first cash-only weekend

We made it through our first cash-only weekend! It has been quite a challenge, but it’s actually been fun! Here are some highlights:

Successes

We didn’t use our debit cards once! The only money we spent was from the $90 we withdrew on Saturday.

We also didn’t go over budget! After buying groceries and seeing a matinee, we have $20 left. This is the exact amount we budgeted for household expenses. Because we didn’t need any household items this week, we’ll hang on to that $20 for a later week when we’ll inevitably need more than $20 for necessary household expenses.

The biggest victory is that I’m not dreading our bottom line. Most weekends, I cringe when I look at Mint the following week and see how much we spent. This week, I know exactly how much we spent, and I know we didn’t blow our budget. Yay!

Challenges

This afternoon, the weather was beautiful and I felt the urge to go out to lunch someplace with patio seating. Because we didn’t have cash for it in the budget, we didn’t go. It was tough, though.

Instead, we took a drive to the beach, walked the dog around a nearby lake, and got some work done. In the end, our choice was healthier for us physically and financially, so I’d say our cash-only budget is having positive effects beyond our bank accounts.

Setbacks

We technically didn’t follow our own rules. Because we were $9 under budget for groceries, we should have ended the weekend with $29 in pocket. Part of the deal was that we would hang on to extra cash if we went under budget for later weeks or something fun at the end of the summer. Instead of hanging on to it, we spent an extra $4 over our entertainment budget because the new Pixar movie “Up” wasn’t playing at the cheap theater. We also picked up a couple extra items at the grocery store for $3 total.

After a weekend of success (with our cash-only budget and with my diet), I was seriously craving ice cream. But I couldn’t bear to break the $20 bill that had survived the weekend. I had $1 in my pocket, plus we had change scattered around the house and in the car. We scrounged together $2.50 and headed to the grocery store to pick up some ice cream sandwiches.

While it was technically cheating, it was definitely the most fun we’ve had on a cash budget. Working hard to scrounge together the money for that ice cream made it that much sweeter, and knowing that we could only spend $2.50 limited our choices.

My unwillingness to part with that $20 bill already shows a change in how I’m viewing money, particulary cash. In the past, I would have viewed that as “extra money” already removed from our account. Now I view it as “household expenses” money that we’ll most likely need in a future week. I didn’t want to spend it, because I knew we would probably need it later to avoid using our debit cards.

If we had gone to the grocery store to pick up ice cream with our debit cards, we might have spent $4 on specialty ice cream instead of the store-brand ice cream sandwiches we chose. I hate to admit it, but when it’s only $4 coming from our bank account instead of breaking a whole $20 bill, I would have been much more likely to spend it. Those little purchases add up, though, which is the reason we’re trying this experiment.

Overall, I think our first weekend was a success! And so far we’re having fun. It’s certainly changing the way we view money. I’m looking forward to more challenges and successes for the next three months. Stay tuned!