Many years ago, a little financial blog described their family’s experience with a “No Spend” month. Over time, this has gained popularity in budgeting circles, and also generated a lot of confusion about the “No Spend” description, because almost all of us have to “spend” money every month on unavoidable things like bills, housing, and food.

I’ve done this a few times over the years, and generally I declare my limits as spending only on bills, groceries, and cat supplies, and pausing spending on all unnecessary/discretionary items.

This year I’m putting more focus on stabilizing my budget, and I’ve decided to do another “No Spend” month for February as a simple financial habits reset.

While the method is called “No Spend” the goal is really about resetting spending habits, meal plans, and becoming more intentional through the reduction of non-essential purchases. A few years ago I went through my monthly bills and reduced them all as much as possible, so they’re all pretty static and the spending reduction is all in the daily, non-bill budget categories.

With that in mind, here are my goals for the February Financial Reset:

Food/Groceries/Dining Out:

  • Meal Plan – sort the freezers and start using up the contents. Stop adding things to the grocery order which are already in the freezer, not cooking the new thing, and then tossing it in the freezer to join the unused stock
  • Groceries – keep the grocery bill within budget by reducing extra purchases and junk food. This comes out to about $85 per week to stay under budget
  • Dining Out – reduce the number of take-out meals, ideally to zero but at maximum not more than $32 for the month, which is half of what I spent last month. Due to my food allergies I don’t normally eat out often, last month was an anomaly and I need to get back out of that habit (see also above re: meal plan)

General Spending:

  • Save instead of Spend this month – I keep regular budget sections for my usual non-essential spending, and this month’s goal is to avoid spending so the category amounts build up a buffer. This includes gardening supplies, kitchenware, clothing, and photography equipment
  • Reduce Amazon orders – while I’d love to say zero Amazon orders, and I’m letting my Prime membership lapse, when I look at the month ahead there are a few things I may need and Amazon is the best place to get them. Top of this list is new filters for all my Dyson air filter fans, the “official” filters are ridiculously expensive but the knock-off versions available on Amazon work just as well and are priced reasonably. There are also a couple of grocery items that I may order in bulk
  • House projects – I keep a couple budget categories for different types of house projects, from planned projects to regular maintenance to “impulse” projects. This month’s goal is to save and prepare for some upcoming planned projects and maintenance, and avoid impulse projects

Cats:

  • Food/litter/supplies – luckily Finn and Pixie are much less complicated than Trixie, so their supplies mostly consist of kibble, litter, a little bit of canned food, and some fancy pumpkin puree. All of this is on auto-ship, but I do often supplement with an extra bag of kibble between the automatic shipments. This month’s litter order is already in progress, we’re still fully stocked on pumpkin, canned food, and probiotics, so the only remaining expense for this month should be an extra bag of kibble from the local pet store (because Pixie goes through a lot of kibble due to her digestive issues preventing her from fully absorbing nutrients.)
  • Cat toys – NO.NEW.CAT.TOYS. I sorted the cat toys last year and got rid of all the ones they aren’t interested in. We still have an entire bucket of new, unused toys they would like, plus piles scattered all over the house. And yet last month I still found myself coming home with bags of new toys regularly. So this month’s goal is no new cat toys
  • Vet bills – this is my largest expense behind the mortgage payment due the the chronic illnesses both kitties have (and Trixie did, too.) Finn is pretty stable right now, but Pixie is still having quite a few issues and as a result she’s going to the vet a lot right now. Our vet is expensive but good (see previous article) and I don’t want to compromise on their care so I have increased the monthly budget line for this, and do what I can to save in ways that won’t impact the quality of care. Thankfully I do have pet insurance for both cats, which covers a portion of all eligible bills

That’s a lot to track in a small month, but it should all be very achievable.

So, how did I do the first week? Here’s the info!

Food/Groceries/Dining Out:

  • Meal Plan – I didn’t sort the freezers yet, but I also didn’t add things to the grocery order that I know are already in the freezer
  • Groceries – this week’s grocery order was $56, well under my weekly budget of $85
  • Dining out – I did not eat out at all this week, hooray!

General Spending:

  • Save instead of Spend – I did not spend on any non-essentials this week, and due to credit card reward points I was able to put a little extra in savings over my target
  • Reduce Amazon orders – no Amazon orders this week, hooray!
  • House projects – no progress getting bids on the upcoming laundry remodel due to too much else going on, but I did add the target savings amounts to all the relevant budget categories, plus a little extra to the Remodeling fund

Cats:

  • Food/litter/supplies – the automatic order for two bags of litter processed today, as expected. However I also called Chewy and was able to return three cases of Trixie’s prescription food that hadn’t been opened, and that was a pretty good amount credited back (which then got transferred to the Vet Bills category, because that’s where I’ll need the extra funds this month)
  • Cat toys – no new cat toys!
  • Vet bills – Pixie had a broad set of lab tests run this week, for a total of about $800. Pet insurance will cover about 80% of that. Pixie also needs a new Gabapentin prescription, and I’m working with our vet to order it directly from the compounding pharmacy instead of through the Vetsource portal, which is a savings of about $25 (“processing” fee plus shipping) if we can get it to work. Unfortunately the compounding pharmacy hasn’t acknowledged receipt of the prescription after three days, so we’ll see if this works out!

Overall, February is off to a pretty good financial start! I’ve taken that time I could have spent shopping or researching purchases, and instead I’ve spent it snuggling with the cats, reading, doing a jigsaw puzzle, and increasing my daily workout time (an increase from 0 to not much still counts!)