It turns out that when you’re living through 2 lockdowns and you’re not that fond of online shopping, you can really make a “No Spend Days” chart go crazy. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, I keep track of my spending by using this chart. Every day that I don’t put my hand in my wallet, I colour in a square. At the end of every week with 3 or less no-spend days, I reward myself by colouring in a silver square.
It makes my spending far more intentional and motivates me to stay on track if the week is coming to an end and I’m close to earning a silver square. It’s silly, but it works for me. It also makes collating my “Annual Spend” chart so much easier, because everything is in the one place. It just takes 3 seconds each day to pop in any purchases or colour in a square.
When the pandemic hit and we were all told to STAY HOME, the Jones household was sitting pretty. As the weird flu from Wuhan started to spread to Europe in February, I didn’t like the looks of it so I started stocking up on non-perishables. When things began going crazy here in Australia, we were set, although David27 insisted we take a shopping trip to Costco that I’ll never forget. No worries about TP here!
As the weeks started to slip by without having to fill up on petrol or go to the supermarket very often, the coloured squares began mounting up. The silver squares got more numerous and started looking like a block rather than squares on their own.
“Hey, wouldn’t it be amazing if I could make this streak last for 26 weeks in a row?” I thought to myself. Half a year. Could it be done?
Turns out it can.
Once I started to focus on keeping those silver squares coming without a break, it became a challenge. I began to try and push spend days towards the end of the week, in case something happened and I had to spend money unexpectedly.
For example, look at the week that began on the 1st of August. I wanted to work in the garden and on the verandah so I had 2 spend days on the weekend. *gasp!* I had little wriggle room for the rest of the week. I was determined to keep the silver streak going so I just used what we had in the pantry and garden and pottered around the place entertaining myself with what I have on-site. Hobbies are very useful things.
The week before that, you’ll see on the Friday an entry called “Connor teeth”. One of the boys needed dental work and as he’s still a student I said I’d pay for it. The dental work actually happened 2 days earlier, but by then I could see that I could maybe make my goal. After all, there was only 9 weeks to go!!! When he rang to tell me the total, I told him what I was doing and said, “Is it ok if I pay you on Friday?” He laughed and agreed.
I’ve been using both my local library and the school library for eBooks to scratch my reading itch. As I’ve said before, I read very quickly so paying $30 – $40 for a book isn’t a good use of my money as it only entertains me for a day or so. Downloading an eBook or an audiobook for free is the way to go for me and it saves me having to fill in a square.
During a stringent lockdown such as we in Melbourne have, little challenges like this help to pass the time and give you something to aim for. If I had’ve failed, it’s not the like sky would fall or anything. It wouldn’t have changed anything in my life. But it was a goal to aim for and every week that I coloured in a silver square it became one step closer to that goal. This made me feel good.
Once I actually have to leave the house and go back to work at school, it’ll be interesting to see whether my spending days will slide back to how they were before the pandemic, or whether I’ll be motivated to keep the silver streak going.
I wonder how many weeks the silver streak will last…?
Thanks for sharing your budget! I find it fascinating! Somebody upgraded to a new iPhone, I love them but boy, are they pricey!
I hope you get to the super silver level (I don’t know what that means, I just made it up….)!
I bought the new cheapest iPhone. My last one lasted 5 years so I’m expecting this one will too.
Great work on the no spend days! Will be interesting to see how it goes post-lock down. How do you think you’ll go?
I know I’ll be devo when the streak comes to an end, so let’s see what happens. It’ll be something unexpected that just HAS to be bought on a Friday, I’m guessing.
I love myself a good spreadsheet too…Well done.
I loved “I read very quickly so paying $30 – $40 for a book isn’t a good use of my money as it only entertains me for a day or so.” This has even started making a 45 minute roundtrip to the library seem like wasted time for me unless I’m seriously stocking up on books. Borrowing library books on my Kindle has been the best things ever for me.
Finding the kindle library has been fantastic!
Gosh, congratulations on your streak! I’ve been trying to use a similar tracker for my spending to curb my takeaway addiction, but it’s been hit and miss. Hopefully I will do better in 2021!
As of yesterday, I’ve made it to 37 weeks straight.
Now I’m REALLY motivated to keep the streak going!