No Spend and Kakebo method 2021
Do no spend challenges work? This was a question I posed to myself mid-January. I couldn’t sit with an answer:
YES – They can give you focus, the motivation to follow through to a goal, you can challenge and surprise yourself and people do it successfully! I’ll share some resources at the end of this post.
NO – It can feel limiting, it’s easy to rebel and self-sabotage, it can highlight money guilt for spending and motivation fades.
This year I’m not setting myself a yearly challenge but seeing my spending through the month to month with tracking and budgeting. My primal rules (if you can call them that) are two quotes I love and get straight to the point:
‘Live within your needs and below your means’ and ‘Hope is not a financial plan’ – Suze Orman.
This is for a few reasons that I share in the video:
To prioritise needs over wants and values over quick buys.
My living expenses (driving a 5 door car finally) have decreased my leisurely spending so for this part of the year I will have to only focus on needs anyway.
I am thankfully able to study the course of my chosen subject, to fulfil that a no spends theme is necessary to make that possible.
I’m getting a sense of myself back after a rough ride in my twenties. I’m creating again, I wake up feeling alive and generally happier. That being said I’m also getting a sense of ‘I’ back and where I value space, freedom, fun, and privacy, I feel these are lacking where we currently live.
In order not to moan, seem ungrateful or beat myself up often and become resentful I am going to use that energy to learn more about spending on needs, saving, and making more money.
Last year as I wasn’t working I learned how to dip and dive into savings accounts – no more.
Lately, I see why autobiographies and memoirs so often talk about ‘becoming’ because that’s how I feel at this very moment.
I am becoming very honest and respectfully do not care to say how I feel and action what I want in small baby steps, anymore.
I’m back!
Tracking, budgeting and more!
Closing with some link love of money resources :
Youtube
Bloggers/Websites:
Other resources:
Book Year of less by Cait Flanders
Ted Talk My No Spend Year Michelle McGach
Notebook in the video is a Kakebo – the Japanese Art of saving money you can read an article about it here.