Budget Better Bonus Series Step two Make changes Now.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and we are back with Part two, which is step two of our Budget Better Bonus series, and we are looking at current changes to make once you have looked at your past transactions.
So if you tuned in yesterday, if you're following along with us kind of in real time, yesterday we talked about a ninety day transaction inventory, being able to look at the past. Today we're talking about a thirty day no spend challenge, so what things we can do in the present, And we're going to talk about making a spending plan so future. So we're doing the whole ghost of Christmas, past, present and future for you in between the holidays.
And I was just fun.
I wish I had watched the Christmas Story. Yeah, I wish i'd watched to prepare, but I didn't. I'm so sorry.
You've never watched any of the rest.
Have well, the Muppets version is the best, but are just like not up on it right now. Okay, so let's talk about changes to make now. The reason we start with the past is that we in our heads might have an idea of what changes we need to make, but more often than not, those ideas are not rooted in reality. They're rooted in fear or misconception or somebody else's ideology. So we look at our past, and we look at real numbers, but we also look at emotional
weight too. Some sometimes numbers may be minimal, but the mental load of that action is really great. So we want to balance by making changes, figuring out what changes we want to make that benefit us most, both financially and mentally. And so the way that we do that in a really efficient way is a thirty day no
spend challenge. And the reason we do that is because when you take thirty days, not a year, not two years, we want to learn how to spend, not how not to spend right, So we do thirty days to take time and pause before we make current spending decisions, and equipped with the knowledge we just got from our transaction inventory, we can better understand our propensity to make some of the decisions we would have made outside of the No Spend Challenge, but for thirty days, we want to have
an automatic no to any discretionary purchase so that we are given time to think about the triggers, think about the route behind it. So whether it's social activity, all those things we talked about yesterday, we have space to think about the root cause and we have space to get creative with how we meet the desire or the
need that we're really trying to get at. We say that frugality it's not about wanting less, training yourself self disciplining yourself to want less, to desire less, but to just meet your needs differently in a way that doesn't cost you as much money or maybe it's your other resources, maybe doesn't cause you as much time or mental load or physical space. That's what we want to do, and we don't do that unless we for ourselves to take space for creativity. And that's what the No Spend Challenge
really allows us to do. It gives us a reprieve from the decision fatigue that comes with making spending decisions and gives space to get creative, innovate, play around, and then go back and learn from those thirty days.
This might sound a little bit radical or extreme, and you know us, we don't love extremes. We love the radical middle. But the radical middle is only found by understanding the extremes and picking and choosing from those extremes what is actually beneficial. There's a reason that we're drawn to either end of the spending spectrum, and so to understand, well, what is good about this end of the spectrum and what can I take with me that will lead to
some degrees of longevity in spending better. So part of our understanding for this no spend challenge and the benefit of it comes from the research of doctor Ann Lemke in her book Dopamine Nation, which we do reference in our book by What You Love without Going Broke, And she does this work with people around addiction, all types of addiction, and has them do essentially a dopamine fast, so like removing themselves from engaging in whatever that activity is,
whether it be shopping is one example, but kind of all ends of the spectrum with addiction, and recognizes that in stopping for thirty days that there's actually some really great even physical neurological benefits where there is rewiring of the neural pathways and a decreasing need for the levels of dopamine that the body and the brain were accustomed to. Now,
dopamine's not wrong, there's nothing like. It's a beautiful thing that our body does and releases, and it is good to engage in some of these activities that give us
that happy hormone. But sometimes especially for us when it comes to money and spending money, we have this release in our brains when we make an impulse purchase, usually just before we make the purchase, and so this is a thirty day no spend challenge is a way to kind of also interrupt not just those habits, but our engagement with the dopamine releases within our bodies and the ways that that's connected with some of our spending decisions
and behaviors. Not to always and forever continue to deprive ourselves. Even the research in dopamination points to reincorporating some of these actions back into place, but in healthier ways with
the addition of other coping mechanisms. So we visit this extreme of a no spend challenge to be able to understand ourselves better, reset those dopamine receptors, create new and different neural pathways, and understand what else can we be engaging in going forward, What creative ways of solving our problems, meeting our needs, getting out our values can we be
doing and maybe even more accurately to the need. There are times that we might just spend because it's all we know to do, it's what we've been trained and socialized to do. But when we have an opportunity to opt out, like I view a no spend challenge as kind of opting out of consumerism, opting out of consumption, not for forever, but to be able to learn ourselves, learn the world around us, learn what we actually enjoy spending money on. That's what this provides, an opportunity to do,
an opportunity for learning that. Then we can more easily find our radicals from there.
All right, so let's talk about what to expect on a no spend challenge. I'll say, first off, when you are going on a path and you decide to change directions, whether like whether you're walking or you're in a car, you will experience friction as you stop and physically change your direction. You the further you are changing your direction, the more friction you experience. And that's so that you
don't fly off the path. Friction is healthy, and friction is what you will be experiencing during a no spend challenge. The entire month is a challenge. That's what we call it a challenge. If it's not challenging for you, you're not learning anything. So mistakes will be made, things will be done out of habit that you didn't want to do. These are not failures. This does not mean you stop
and then just try again next month. These are part of the process, part of the challenge, part of the learning. So embrace the friction, lean into it, and view it as healthy. View these difficult difficulties as healthy learning experiences. So right off the bat, know that. And in doctor Lemke's studies, she found her patients the first two weeks of their fasting, they were miserable. The brain's reward pleasure
pathways were starting to reprogram, but weren't there yet. So in her patients sustaining specifically from like physical things like cannabis or sugar, their physical withdraw symptoms peaked in the second week, So you could be experiencing some of that too, if a lot of your overspending is on food related things. But after four weeks, the pathways she found were almost
totally rewired, and most patients reported positive experiences. So even during those tough times, know that research shows that good experiences are on the way even when we're looking. The brain can do fantastic things in four weeks, even like the brain's gray matter when it shrinks from alcohol abuse, can begin reversing within just two weeks of abstinence. And we say in the book seventy seven percent of athletes
with mild traumatic brain injuries recover within four weeks. So there is a lot happening in this challenge, so be prepared for it to be difficult, but keep going.
So in addition to not doing it perfectly and absolutely coming upon barriers, you're also you also can expect that you're going to be able to exercise some of your creativity. So with a no spend challenge, you are deciding what you are and aren't spending on. You've made the list of what we're saying no to. We definitely recommend as many discretionary categories as possible. Right obviously we're still saying yes to keeping a roof over our heads and being able to buy gas to get to work, but we
get to decide all these other categories. Whether it's we're not spending on food out, or we're also pairing it with a pantry challenge and we're only eating the things that we already have in our cupboards and in our freezers, or we're not spending on activities out, you name it, or maybe all of it is going to happen for you if you really want to just like throw it all at the wall and learn about yourself. It will also force you to engage in some unique problem solving
and creativity. And we recommend that you don't say no to fun. This is just saying no to a lot of categories of spending for a short period of time. But what we can do is look at where are there free activities happening? In What ways can I be the initiator of some of these fun events? What are the things that I'm finding are really difficult pain points for me? Like I was about to pull out my credit card and I didn't like what I felt It came across some of that friction. What can I do instead?
Because it does need to be replaced with something. This is not just about deprivation, it's about recreating some patterns of behavior finding alternatives, learning more about what we like, what lights us up. So even in some of the planning process, I would recommend having a list of maybe things you want to try, hobbies, you want to re engage in, things that you think you might want to do when you come upon some of this friction and
maybe be prepared expect to be surprised by yourself. That you may find that there are things that are easier in this process than when you thought what you thought, and possibly parts that are more difficult in areas that you didn't think. Either way, you're going to learn about yourself. So that's a huge expectation that you can have.
All right, So how do we prepare for a no spend challenge? There's three steps to a no spend challenge, preparing, abstaining, and learning. So the first is to prepare, and that ninety day transaction inventory is part of that. You set yourself up for failure if you don't know what to expect to be difficult when you start this no spend challenge. But after your ninety day transaction inventory, you have a good idea of what's going to be difficult in the
upcoming month, and you can prepare for that. So whether that's needing to change a route to where you how you get somewhere to avoid passing a place that you spend at habitually, or it's making your coffee at home before you leave to go somewhere where you're you know, buying coffee habitually, or you have a habit of doing an activity where you always end up spending money, like maybe going to Target when it's hot outside, like figuring out where else I can go that can also get
me out of the heat. So this is how we prepare. First, we're making that list of activities, and that's one of the resources when you order when you get buy what you love without going broke. Our resource page also has a list of like fifty two activities that you can do instead of spending money to help you with that. But then also there are things obviously that you're going to spend on that you're not impulse spending that may
but may lead to impulse spending, like gas. Nobody's impulse spending on gas, But sometimes being at the gas station leads us to going inside to get something. So can I go to it different gas station or can I just be prepared with that information. Grocery shopping, I always grocery shop on a no spend challenge. Some people don't. But if there are ways that I can stay out of the grocery store, do I just need to check to see if there's anything I need to stock up
on before the month starts. To make it less likely I have an unplanned trip to the grocery store.
I make so much less impulse food grocery decisions when I order my groceries online, Like, you're not walking the aisle. So that's even a strategy, even if it's not something you do regularly, it's a strategy you could try during this time.
Yeah, okay, and then next we abstain, So we practice, and we are fasting from the dopamine inducing habit, not from dopamine itself. So that's what we're doing when we abstain for one month. And we would recommend also adding in maybe some gratitude journaling or just journaling in general. We don't want you to add more to your plate. We think a subtractive method is most helpful. That's literally
what a no spend challenge is. It's a subtractive solution to our problems versus an additive, but gratitude journaling can help with some of this internal motivation to want to keep going when we can sit and be thankful for what's in the present despite not having all the additives that we would have normally. And then last is reflecting
or learning. So once we get done with the thirty days, we are then looking back again before we go forward, and we are thinking about, Okay, what things do I want to take with me from this month and what things do I want to leave behind? And this is where we're going to start making some long term sustainable bolt changes and really finding our radical middle.
You know what is the radical middle for me? And I feel like last long term sustainability.
The Lightening Round.
I know we're throwing you for a loop here with this one. Uh, with these little shorter bonus episodes, we don't have a bill of the Week, but we do have a Lightning Round because we can't forget our pups. So for today's Lightning Round, we are asking each other what was the most difficult part of your last no spend challenge?
So for me, I had I was posting about it last year. I did no spend January. I posted every day a little tip or a little you know, whatever I was feeling or learning, and that was for our listeners, like we were all doing it together and I was doing it for them. But I found that people in my life were seeing them, and when I wanted to spend money and not tell anyone, they wouldn't let me because they were with me and seeing me with the money and they knew I was on the No Spend Challenge.
So I would highly recommend talking about it on social media because it's going to help. But a lot of our impromptu spending comes from people outside of us, and if they don't know you're doing the No Spend Challenge, they don't know to help you. They don't know they can help you or hurt you. And so the most difficult part was not being able to not follow through because I had accountability. So creating accountability on social media is highly valuable.
Yeah, for me. The most difficult part is when there's invitations to things that are going to cost money. And so, yeah, sometimes you can offer an alternative to people, well, I'm doing this challenge instead of that, would you want to go to this free event with me? Come over? But sometimes there were just events that they're going to this concert. They just invited me to go with them, and I'm opting out of that just for this very very short season.
But that's one of the more difficult parts of it for me, is there is truly something going on that I could participate in, but I'm choosing not to kind of for the sake of this other learning that I'm engaging in.
We can rationalize that things that come up during the no spend challenge are you know, once in a lifetime or never happen, YadA YadA. And this happens with events and with sales, like if there's a sale on something, people will want to take advantage of it because they don't know when it will happen again. And this is another way that the transaction inventory can help you because then you can go back and look, Okay, has this
person invited me to something that I've spent money on? Yes, several times, so it is totally reasonable for me to ask them to do something that doesn't spend doesn't cost money, or have I done this in the last three months? Yes, Okay, it will come up again. Maybe it doesn't come up every month, but do I need to do it every month?
Is maybe twice a year, Okay, So you can start to ask yourself these questions because you're looking at real data, and especially when you're looking back at your shopping and your food purchases and you're like, Okay, how many times have I bought something just because it was on sale? So, yeah, that's sale's going to come up again. It's not a
once in a lifetime. You can skip it while you're on the no spend challenge nine times out of ten, but you can also look back and if there truly is something that's once in a lifetime that you've been waiting for, or a sale that normally sales can be planned for. So if you know, like, oh, the annual sale is coming up this month, but I also want to do a no spen challenge, I'm just going to take this out of it and spend on this this one time because I know I'm planning for this particular sale.
But I would say nine point nine times out of ten that doesn't happen. Yeah, it's the other way around.
Now, we know we're giving you a lot of action steps in this budget Better Bonus series, but don't feel like you have to implement on them all at once. These are episodes that you can come back to to help guide you in this process. Again, the book is a really good guide for it. The resources page that comes along with the book is a really good guide.
But we are still going to recommend that you begin with that ninety day transaction inventory and then plan a point in the future where you're going to do a no spend challenge. We are actually going to be talking about no spend challenges in the February Friend letter, so that could be a really good time to plan. If you're not getting the friend that are already Frugal friendspodcast dot com join us in that we'll be posting more about and of walking you through this no spend challenge.
You can even go back into our Instagram archives a bit to see Jen's journey last year with a no spend challenge. So you decide when you want to do it, but know that it doesn't have to happen all at once. We're just giving you the tools and resources and we will be back again with our third and final installment of our Budget Better Bonus series, which will be step three how to plan for the future making a better spending plan. See you then
Google Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.