No-Spending Challenge Results #4

Honestly, in keepin’ it real I kinda always hate doing a no-spending challenge because it prohibits my stocking-up ways for awhile. I don’t want to wait a whole month to stock up on the almost-gone food because I don’t want to be stuck spending more in a pinch. But I ALWAYS love the results, so I’m always glad I’ve done it.

So for my real numbers…

Store	Date	Amount Spent	Weekly Total	4 Week Total
Week 1
Costco	2/4/2016	$55.82	$105.53	$264.17
FM	2/7/2016	$49.71
Week 2
Haggen	2/10/2016	$5.98	$24.00
Winco	2/11/2016	$18.02
Week 3
Fred Meyer	2/16/2016	$25.77	$94.24
Fred Meyer	2/16/2016	$13.80
Costco	2/17/2016	$36.94
Winco	2/18/2016	$12.84
Fred Meyer	2/18/2016	$4.89
Week 4
Winco	2/25/2016	$13.80	$40.40
Fm	2/26/2016	$22.62
Fm	2/26/2016	$3.98		$66.04/Average per Week

If you’ll remember my parameters, which you can read here, I was only allowing myself to buy perishables. The only item I “stocked up” on were some cans of beans for $0.50 each since they were at their rock bottom price. And we hardly see that rock bottom price here.

We spent way more that first and third week then I wanted. Part of it was I sent Jonathan to the store…twice. I usually do all of the shopping. Unless I write down the quantities of everything I’ve written on a list, he’ll come home with the max.

Oh, and we actually were about to run out of toilet paper which has NEVER happened in our 16.75 years of marriage, so JSarr also had to buy some of that the first week. So those things skewed numbers just a bit, but I’m glad to say that we still averaged $66.04/week. That’s okay. I think it will be easy to beat next time I run a challenge, though. That definitely beats the $113/week we averaged in our month of tracking normal grocery expenses (see results here from January 2016).

Here’s the best news: I started out the four weeks with $285 in my emergency grocery fund that I try to contribute to all school year. By the end of the month we finished with $610. I do call that a success-if we can’t be spending $40/week, at least we saved $325 for the month (which is more than I saved from September to February 1st put together). And so you know, the subsequent grocery outing after the challenge was over, I didn’t touch the savings (and I still haven’t and don’t plan to). That’s really the whole point of running the challenge for us. I want to build our savings for the lean summer months when piano lessons are few and far between.

I could have saved more in the month, but all of my kids’ ended up being sick at some point causing me to cancel some piano lessons.

Did you end up doing a no-spending challenge? What were your parameters and how much did you save?

Blessings on your stewardship journey.

You can read about my other No-Spending Challenges: