Middle Path Finance

Links to No Spend Month bloggers

Here are the links to the bloggers featured in my recent Bankrate.com article, "Jump-start savings with a no-spend month."

Rachel and her family have a No Spend Month every July, spending just $250 that month on everything that isn't a regular monthly bill, including groceries. Read more about her experience at Small Notebook.

Shannon S. and her family went on a 6-week spending crash diet. Read more about her experience at Nourishing Days.

Joy P. Harkins had a No Spend Month last November.Read more about her experience at Just Plain Joy. 

And don't forget to read about my month of not spending, starting here.

I hope these stories inspire you.

The brown bag challenge

Donna Freedman over at MSN Money has proposed a simple, easy money challenge: pack your lunch every day for a month. Then, pay yourself $5 every time you don't go out for coffee or lunch during the workweek. If you transfer that money into an online savings account, you'll have a decent chunk of change at the end of the month. You can use that money to pad your emergency fund or to pay down some debt.

I like this idea because it is a way to cut back without dooming yourself to years and years of no frills drudgery. Food your cook at home is usually healthier than restaurant fare as well.

This does not mean, however, that you are doomed to a month of peanut butter sandwiches. You just have to turn on your noodle and be creative.

Here are some lunch-packing ideas from the Internet:

• For those who love the simple sandwich: what to buy and how to pack it to avoid the mushies.
• RecipeCzar also has some ideas and recipes for exotic, interesting foods that hold up well in a lunchbox
• The Dallas Morning News has a feature, with recipes, to avoid lunchbox blues
• The Dollar Stretcher has some practical, thrifty tips for lunch packers

Here at MPF, we employ a two-pronged strategy to keeping the lunch budget in chec.. First, we stock hubby's desk with ingredients such as peanut butter, crackers, bread, tuna, rice cakes, and other miscellaneous food items every month. That way, if he is caught away from home and forgot his lunch, he still has something to eat.

Second, we try to make large pots of easily-reheated foods several times a week. Since it is winter, we make a lot of big pots of soup such as vegetarian chili, corn chowder, and lentil-mushroom-okra stew. Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, magically made in the crock pot, also do well as weekday lunches. Come summer, hot soup will be replaced with a lot of salad and fruit.

My mother-in-law, who can pinch a nickel until the buffalo poops, claims that packing lunch for her andd her hubby saved them at least $50,000 over the course of their working lives. You may not be able to save that much, but isn't it worth a little extra money in the bank to try it for a month?

No spend month: The end!

It’s over. We did it. We made it through No Spend Month, where we had only $400 to spend on gas, groceries, and entertainment, with money to spare. We spent $339.54.

The last week was both challenging and liberating.

We hosted Thanksgiving for the family, and we managed to buy the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and bake two apple pies without breaking the bank. We even made ice cream from scratch on Black Friday and had enough money left to go bowling.

Now that the challenge is winding down, we’ve had the chance to wax philosophical.

“I think it was really good to be reminded what it’s like to live without money,” the hubby said over coffee this morning. “The thing is, you live like you don’t have any money until you fall into a real job and have money to buy whatever you want, and then you do, and it becomes a shortcut. You don’t spend time on stuff.”

I agree. It’s been a valuable experiment. In some ways, our month without spending has eliminated many wants from my life. That became clear when my hubby asked me for my Christmas list yesterday, and I didn’t have anything to put on it. Sometimes it takes an extreme bout of not spending to remember that buying things doesn’t make you any happier, and doesn’t make your life any better or more interesting.

The spending crash-diet has had more tangible results. We saved 50 percent of our take-home pay in November. We usually save about 10 percent. And, we talked about money and came up with a sustainable monthly budget for the first time in our 7-year marriage. November has realigned us, gotten us on the same page, and hopefully the lessons we learned this month will become a foundation for a happier, and more prosperous financial life.

In the final week, we spent

• $35.54 on gas
• $42 on groceries
• $12 on bowling on Black Friday

If you want to replicate this experiment, here is how we made it through the month:

Food

Groceries were by far our biggest expense. We cooked at home almost every night, and when we didn’t cook, we ate leftovers. Most of our meals were vegetarian. Our main source of meat protein was eggs and chicken.

We made a lot of soup, such as vegetarian chili and corn chowder.We ate a lot of Mexican-inspired food. Yellow rice and beans can make a variety of dishes that are healthy and inexpensive. If dinner one night was fajitas, the leftovers were made into huevos rancheros the next day.

We did eat out, just once, after a memorial service for my dad who passed away in July. We didn’t go out because we were too tired or didn’t feel like cooking. When we craved restaurant food, we tried to make an equivalent meal at home.

While shopping, we used Aldi’s for canned goods, pantry basics, and cereals. We used grocery sale flyers to figure out what to cook each week and determine what fresh fruits and veggies we could afford.

We didn’t eat enough fresh produce this month. It was expensive, in part because it’s winter, so fresh local varieties aren’t available. We did eat a lot of bananas because the grocery near us has “Banana Thursdays”, selling them for 29 cents a pound.

A stocked pantry is essential. As is having bags of onions and potatoes on hand. With that, you are unstoppable. It gives you the option to buy only when things are on sale, to cook at home even when you’re in a hurry, and to avoid driving to the store every few days to pick up something for a recipe.

Gas

We have two cars, a 1998 Chrysler Concorde (the gas guzzler) and a 1998 Honda Civic (the gas sipper). We filled up the Chrysler once and the Civic twice. Both have almost-full tanks still. We saved gas by using the Civic for any trip over 5 miles. Hubby and I also worked from home as much as possible. We always ran multiple errands on one trip.

Entertainment

We got a lot of free DVDs from the library and from friends. We hosted two parties, and we also hosted Thanksgiving for the family. All party and meal supplies were purchased on sale. I went to an opening at an art gallery, for free.

I took many books out of the library and caught up on some home improvement and craft projects. I am still amazed at how many projects I have not yet done even though I bought supplies months ago.

We also spent several nights drinking a glass of wine by the fireplace. I also began hosting free yoga classes at my house every Monday.

Even though we have been on a budget, we haven’t been alone. We’ve still managed to socialize and spend time with family and friends. Before this month, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.

Baby

We have an 8-month old baby. To save money, we used the cloth diapers we received as gifts when he was born. This saved us about $30-$45 on disposable diapers. Baby food was included in our grocery budget, but at 49 cents a jar, wasn’t prohibitively expensive.

Handling the money

How you handle your money during No Spend Month is critical. It has to be cash only. It’s just too easy to overspend if you have a credit or debit card. We used cash for everything except gas, only because we weren’t good at estimating how much it cost to fill up. When we used the debit card, we immediately took cash out of the envelope to cover it.

What’s next?

First, we celebrate. Staying on budget has earned us a dinner at a fancy restaurant. Ironically,we have decided to forgo $40 steaks for a $10 Indian buffet instead. It looks like our new frugal habits are sticking.

No spend month is great, but if it doesn’t carry over into your regular life, it’s really all for nothing. December marks the beginning of a new challenge. We have designed a new, long-term budget that will allow us to live on significantly less than we were before we went on a crash diet. No spend month has shown us what is possible, and that we can do so much more with the resources we are blessed to have.

This story originally appeared on SavingAdvice.com.

The $20 challenge: How to get started

What is this $20 challenge I keep talking about? It's simple. The $20 challenge is a way to get you thinking about how to make and save more money.

You start with $20. It can be money in a jar or in an online savings account, but you have to keep it separate from the rest of your cash. The $20 challenge usually lasts one year. The goal is to see how much than $20 can grow, a little bit at a time, in that one-year period.

You have several options when setting up your challenge. Everyone does this a little differently You have to decide what is right for you, write down the rules, and then stick to them.

I have done this challenge and have been amazed by the results. I started the challenge on Jan 1, 2008. I decided I would dedicate any money I made from selling on Etsy, eBay, or the Amazon Marketplace to the challenge. I also added change I found on the street,the contents of my loose change jar, money I made from selling at craft fairs, and anything I earned from small Web writing projects. None of this money was to come from my primary freelance journalism business. I opened an EmigrantDirect online savings account to house the money. I just transferred a dollar here and there, as the money came in.

By the end of my first year, I had turned my $20 into $1,836. I never in a million years thought it would amount to that much. It's a testament to the fact that small amounts of money slip through our fingers every day, wasted, when they could really be saved and put to better use.

Now that you are probably convinced that it works. How can you set up your own? Here are some examples:

A crafter could use that $20 to buy supplies that will help them make more money. They could then sell those crafts at a craft fair or on Etsy.com, and put any profit back into the $20 challenge jar.

A gardener could take than $20 and use it to buy tomato plants. You could then put the money you saved by not buying tomatoes all summer into the $20 challenge jar.

Others leave the $20 in the fund and simply add any money they earn that comes from a new source. Your regular paycheck doesn't count.

For instance, if you find a dime in the grocery store parking lot, or recycle aluminum cans for money, that could go to the challenge. If you sell something on eBay or through the Amazon Marketplace, the profit could be added to the challenge. If you have a yard sale, that could also beef up the fund.

Others use savings: They add money to the jar every time they use a coupon at the grocery store. Others add rebate checks or any other surprise money to the challenge jar.

This idea is a great one and it works. It came from SavingAdvice.com.

If you have more ideas for the $20 challenge, please post here or send me an email. For more money challenges, visit the money challenge page.

No spend month: Week 3

I had a dream last night that I got to eat out. Sigh. As much as I try to replicate our favorite restaurant meals at home, we miss eating out. It's been three weeks.

That means the end, It's almost here. We only have one week left of no-spend month, where we vowed to only spend $400 for all of November on everything we need, including groceries, entertainment, and gas.

But it's a big week, with Thanksgiving and all of the usually-oh-so-tempting Black Friday deals that I have to ignore because they aren't in the budget for me this year, no matter how cheap.

Our super-frugality has become in some ways routine, and in other ways, trying.  I miss good ethnic food.

During week three, we spent $86. Most of it, $55, went to groceries. We also spent another $18 on gas to fill up our second car.

How have we managed for this long on so little?

If you'd told me two months ago we'd be able to live on $400, I would have thought you were crazy. But by breaking our bad habits-- like eating out, all the time-- and being a little more conscientious, we've been able to reduce our expenses significantly.

So, if you are sitting at home wondering how we've done it, or planning your own No-spend month, here are a few tips:

1. Meat is a luxury when you are living on a shoestring. Most of our meals have been vegetarian, more out of necessity than desire. If we do eat meat, it's only what is on sale.

2. We've been borrowing DVDs from friends and from the library. And, we've been lighting a lot of fires and putting our feet up on the coffee table while drinking some of those bottles of wine we've had in the cupboard. That was the good part of staying home.

3. So far, we've filled up the gas tank of each of our two cars once. To save fuel, we use the small, compact car for any trip longer than 5 miles, and we run multiple errands on one trip-- no more running out just to get one thing at the grocery store.

I also recommend spending as little as possible early in the month, so that you don't run out of money at the end of the month. Our first week was our lowest-spend, at $46. We haven't been able to go that low since, because the pantry runs dry and the cars eventually run out of gas.

Beyond that, it's been just a matter of staying out of spend's way. No window shopping, no mouse finger dangerously close to clicking on the Amazon.com deal of the day. Although I do admit to Internet window shopping, I have yet to one-click shop.

No spend month: Week 2

We are now two and a half weeks into our no-spend month, where we vowed to spend only $400 for all of November on everything we need, including groceries, entertainment, and gas.

This week, in some ways, has been a lot easier. Our super-frugality has become part of the routine. Cooking every night has finally become a habit, with the hubby remarking "that the best thing about this challenge is that there is always something yummy in the fridge."

I can deal with that.

Hubby has also stopped pouting. Not just stopped, but done a complete 360. Sunday, the start of week three, he said "You know, we should try to live on $600 a month, including bills, every month."

I almost had a heart attack. One, I never thought I would hear him say it, and two, for a hot minute I was really afraid I would have to live on $600 a month forever.

Now that we are deeper into the experiment, we have seen the benefits and started to experience the drawbacks.

Let's start with the positive. The house is cleaner. If you can't go out, you may as well vacuum.

Living in a clean house is fabulous, but having a fat bank account is even better. Usually, we save about 10 percent of our take-home pay every two weeks. But we managed to put 50 percent of our pay into savings this week, a real testament to the fact that we are living on a shoestring.

Considering the current economic and job scene, it has been really fulfilling to build up our cash reserves, and at the same time practice living on next to nothing. It's a valuable skill to have if you suddenly don't have a job.

Now to the drawbacks. We did spend more than twice as much the second week as we did the first, $118 compared to $46.

Here is where it went:
$90 for groceries. Half of this went to our Thanksgiving turkey and side dishes. The grocery store was selling turkeys for 29 cents a pound if you spent another $30, so we did the math and determined it was worth it to buy everything now, including fresh green apples for apple pie, cranberries, and of course, a 17-pound turkey.
$19 on gas. Lower gas prices were a real budget-saver here.
$5 for a replacement inner tube for our jogging stroller. It didn't seem fair for the baby to miss out on his daily walk just because we were trying to save a few dollars.
$5 on beers with a friend who came into town from Chicago. We can't just not visit with friends from out of town.

As a result of this challenge, I also notice I am doing things I have never done before, in an effort to save money. For instance, I took a calculator (to make sure I was on budget, to the penny) and a sale flyer with me to the grocery store. Now I wonder why the hell I've never done this before. I have also learned a valuable cooking lesson. If you have a bag of onions and a few pounds of potatoes, the sky is the limit.

For fun, we borrowed some DVDs from a friend and popped popcorn.

It wasn't all fun this week. Saturday was tough, because we had to turn down a dinner and drinks invitation to our favorite restaurant. It just wasn't in the budget. I'm sure we'll get over it, though.

Also, part two of the challenge was to try to lower our monthly bills. So far, I have only managed to shave $14 off of what we pay every month, by getting both my home phone and Internet with the same company. Maybe I can do better, like trying to cut our electricity bill in half.

But I think that is a challenge for another day.

No spend month: Week 1

Four days into the challenge, hubby began pouting.

"This sucks. Everything costs money. It's so depressing," he said, as he unloaded our $18 bag of groceries. "I'm noticing all kinds of things I didn't before. This takes too much planning."

Meaning, he finally is noticing that diapers and formula, leaving the kitchen light on, and drinking beer costs money. And now that he has a set budget, all of a sudden he feels like he's missing out. Because he can't do something, all of a sudden he really wants to. He's never been a high-maintenance guy, so I thought he would have a much easier time that I would.

I, on the other hand, am feeling optimistic about the challenge. I think we are going to do just fine, even if we have committed to buying the Thanksgiving turkey for the extended family.

The challenge hasn't put a crimp in our lifestyle yet. We are cooking at home every night, sure, but the food is good and plentiful, and there are still plenty of free movies to rent from the library.

We've also managed to live something resembling a normal life. Sitting at home moping and avoiding our friends isn't sustainable, and we'd like this to be something we can and want to do again.

The first day of the challenge, I went to an art opening at my friend's gallery. Cost: $1 for the parking meter.

On election night, we had a party. It's been a tradition since the 2000 election, so it'd be a shame to skip it now. Normally we'd spare no expense to throw a party, but this time our budget to feed four kids and 11 adults was only $30. (Okay, $18 originally, but then hubby realized we had no lighter fluid and no side dishes, so we spent another $12.) We didn't think we could pull it off, but we did, and there were plenty of leftovers.

Even though we're only a week in, the challenge has already altered our habits. Our limited budget led us to shop at Aldi's and look for loss leaders in the local grocery ads for the first time in seven years. By Thursday, the hubby had snapped out his depression and declared "Turkeys are on sale for 78 cents a pound." Looks like we have our Thanksgiving solution.

Here is what we've spent this week:
What we've spent: $46
That includes $1 for parking, $31.50 for the election night party food, and $5 for raffle tickets as a fundraiser for my mom's school, and the $8.50 that mysteriously disappeared from hubby's wallet. He has yet to come clean about what he spent it on, but we're not over budget, so I'm not going to nag. We had 3 No Spend days this week. 

I also hit the jackpot. Sometimes small wishes do come true. Finding a yoga class has been on my to do list for a while, but was out this month due to our budget. Then I got a call from an old friend who is getting her yoga teaching certification, needs to log a lot of hours of teaching, and wanted to know if I'd host a free yoga session at my house once a week. Bingo.

Not shopping and not spending has had an unintended side effect. My productivity has sky-rocketed. In one week, I have knocked several things off of my to-do list, including framing four lithographs I bought 6 months ago and rearranging the guest room furniture. It's also forced me to come to terms with my closets, which are overflowing with stuff we never wear and never use. It's time to let all of that go. Ebay here I come.

I can see now the potential this challenge has to be life changing. Everyday, we think about what we really need and what we really don't, and how to make as much as we can out of as little as possible. These are skills I embraced when I was young, broke, and in college. but somewhere I lost my way. I'm hoping to find my way back.

This series originally appeared on SavingAdvice.com.