We have covered how to plan and set goals for a no-spend month, but how do you ensure you put the money saved to better use? It is integral to plan out your savings so you can use them for something important!
The goal for your no-spend month might be to save for a holiday, pay down some debt, or make an important purchase. To ensure you hit this goal, you will need to do some forward planning. The first step, as always, is to draw up a budget. The budget will show you exactly what you usually would spend in a month (drawing upon your spending history), and you will then be able to guess how much you will be able to save during your no-spend month.
Once you have an estimate, compare that to what you you need to save to reach your goal. Is it more? That’s great! Determine what you will do with the remaining funds - perhaps deposit it into your emergency fund, or put it towards another long-term savings goal. If your calculations come to less than you need, you have a few options.
You could extend your no-spend month to last for an extra week or two (depending on how much extra you need). Another option is to see where else you could cut costs. Can you downgrade your mobile plan? Switch electricity providers? Make some sacrifices? Go through your spendings with a fine-toothed comb to look for any places you can cut back. A third option is to look into ways you can make some extra money on the side.
When taking part in a no-spend month, the most important thing is to avoid blowing out your budget the following month. It can be tempting to celebrate completing your no-spend month by buying all the things you feel as though you missed out on, but this will likely lead to you spending all the money you had initially saved, meaning you essentially wasted the month of not spending.