One Month Mindful Spending Challenge
Very few of us are good at mindful spending. We are constantly talking about saving money yet we are constantly spending, and we are a culture that loves convenience. From grabbing a coffee on the way to work or picking up dinner at the drive through, if it’s easy, we love it!
The problem with easy is that it’s expensive, deceivingly expensive. That coffee for $2 seems cheap until you multiply it by the 365 days a year you buy it. Track your spending and it won’t take long before you see that your $2 coffee habit is costing you almost $750 a year! Yes, that’s $750 per year 😱And that’s just on the coffee. What about the dinners out or the weekend shopping sprees or the regular massages, etc. Do we really need all of this stuff?
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Mindful Spending
Mindful spending is actually quite simple…know where your money is going, period. Once you know where it’s going, it will be easier to identify potential areas for savings.
The first step of learning to spend mindfully is to understand where your money by tracking your spending. The easiest way to figure this out is to write everything down, and I mean everything. When I started this challenge, it literally only took me about 3 days of tracking to see where I was wasting hundreds of dollars a month. Immediately, I began working to get my spending under control.
Read to the end of this post for a free printable spending tracker!
This One Month Mindful Spending Challenge is fairly easy and I have included the items that I was able save on. Feel free to adapt this plan to suit your spending habits but if you aren’t sure where to begin, you can follow my lead and focus on the items listed below. Using this method you will see how you can save more money. I will share how much I was able to save doing this challenge. Can you save as much as I did?
1. Skip the Coffee Run
This one was one of the biggest money savers for me. In the past, I would pick up a tea from my local coffee shop on my way to work and I never thought much about it. It was only after I started tracking it all that I realized what my morning stop for tea was actually costing me. $2.05 every morning, 5 days a week. Doesn’t seem like much right? Weekly total of $9.25 still doesn’t seem that bad until you multiply it by 52 weeks in a year and all of a sudden I realized I was spending upwards of $500 a year on take out tea. If I included the weekend pickups for the kids soccer games I was way over that.
I corrected my morning beverage routine with a travel mug and tea brewed at home. I now scour flyers and buy tea when on sale. This smart shopping means that, on average, a cup of black tea brewed at home costs me as little as 5 cents.
Coffee Run Savings In One month (based on 4 weeks of 5 work days)
$2.79 x 20 (monthly work days) = $55.80 (monthly morning coffee cost)
$0.05 x 20 = $1 (brew at home monthly tea bag cost)
$55.80 – $1 = $54.80 monthly savings by making my own tea at home
2. Skip the Take-Away Lunch
Going out for lunch on workdays get expensive quickly. I’m not someone who eats lunch at the food court daily but I definitely did around twice per week and spent around $7.50 each time. That comes to a weekly total of around $15 and a monthly total of $60. That $60 is almost half of my weekly grocery budget!
This one was easy for me to fix. I started bringing leftovers for lunch or making a sandwich or salad to bring with me, just like I had always been doing on the days I was already packing my own lunch. The exact cost of each lunch was difficult to determine as it was different everyday but I estimated that each home made lunch cost me $3 maximum.
Homemade Lunch Savings in One Month
Eating lunch out: $7.50 x 2 days a week = $15 x 4 weeks = $60
Replacing those 2 days with homemade lunch: $7.50(lunch out cost) – $3(cost of home made lunch) = $4.50 x 2 days a week = $9.00 x 4 weeks = $36 monthly savings by making my own lunch every day
*For those of your who eat lunch out daily, your savings would be more then double mine!
3. Scrap the Manicures and Pedicures
So, I don’t get manicures but man I love my pedicures! Through documenting where my money was goin, I realized that I was spending $30 every 2 weeks to get my feet looking pretty. I’m so over that now! After buying a nice new nail polish from the dollar store along with a nail file, I’m doing it myself with huge savings!
I bought myself a foot bath and now treat myself to a new nail polish color every month.
Pedicure Savings in One Month
Pedicure cost per month: $50
Cost of nail polish: $3.79
Cost of nail file and buffer: $3.69
One Time Cost of Foot Spa: $24.98
$50-$3.79-$3.69- $24.98=$17.54 (savings in month one with foot spa purchase)
$50-$3.79-$3.69 = $42.52 saved monthly by skipping the nail salon starting in month two
4.Skip the Hair Salon
I stopped getting highlights and will never go back because they are way to expensive! I even quit the salon color this month and went back to boxed dye to see if it would color over my greying hair and, guess what…it did! My last visit to the salon was around 6 weeks before I completed this challenge and cost $177.50. Holy smokes! My hair looked great but not good enough for the price I was paying.
I ditched the highlights and salon color and opted only for a $50 trim and a box of Nice n Easy hair dye. I do have quite a few greys and need to touch up my roots every 4 weeks but your savings may be even greater than mine if you don’t need to color that often!
Ditching the Salon Colour One Month Savings
Previous cost for color and trim: $177.50
Cost for trim only: $50 (including tip)
Drug store hair dye: $6.99
$177.50 – $50 – $6.99= $120.51 monthly savings by ditching the salon color
5. Read Grocery Flyers
This is not something I did differently during my mindful spending month. Every week, I scour our local flyers and plan our meals based on what is on sale. I have a grocery budget of $150 per week and often come in under that amount. We are a family of four, 2 adults and 2 teens and always have enough food in the house including goodies for movie nights 🙂
I love the Flipp app and totally recommend it. It organizes all of the flyers and specials in your area and helps me plan my weekly shopping.
I do not have an exact savings amount here but I didn’t leave this off of the list because groceries are where many people can save hundreds of dollars a month.
Check out sales, make use of rewards programs and see your savings grow!
6. Ditch the Dining Out
I already discussed how much I saved by bringing a home made lunch to work but quitting the dinners out saved me even more! Our family of four had take out an average of once per week, sometimes more. The cost of a take out dinner once per week came to around $50. Multiply that by 4 weeks and thats $200!
The cost of one home made dinner for the 4 of us averages around $10 so savings were huge here too!
One Month Savings By Quitting Take Out Dinner
Cost of take out once per week: $50
Cost of homemade dinner one meal: $10
$200(takeout monthly cost) – $40 (monthly home made meal on previous take out nights) = $160 savings by ditching the takeout dinner
7. Scrap the Lottery Tickets
I was previously lotto pool at work. We each contributed $10 per week in the hopes of winning millions. Unfortunately we never did but that $10 a week sure added up. I was spending total of $520 per year on lottery tickets.
I quit the lottery pool and saved $40 per month.
Final Tally...
- $54.80 by skipping the morning drive through tea
- $36 by bringing my own lunch every day
- $42.52 by doing my own pedicure
- $120.51 by skipping the salon colour sessions
- ? By planning meals based on flyer sales
- $160 by skipping take out dinner once a week
- $40 by skipping the lottery tickets
TOTAL: $453.83 in one month!!!! This translates to $5445.96 a year!!!!
I made changes to my spending habits and continue to make smart choices when it comes to buying both products and services. I’m now aware of the importance of knowing where my money is going and diverting unnecessary spending to my savings. After seeing the first month’s success, I have not reverted back to my old ways and am on track to save over $5000 this year!
I’m continuing to look at ways to cut back on my spending in order to increase my savings. My next steps are to analyze our cell phone plans and the amount of gas we use.
Try It...
Give this challenge a try and let me know how it goes in the comments below!
Some products that helped me along my mindful spending journey...
I absolutely love this 16oz tumbler and I take it everywhere I go. It is both pretty and practical! This has been my go-to item for limiting take out tea!
This is the container I use for my workday lunches. After dinner, I usually put some leftovers in it right away and stick it in the fridge. Before work, I just grab it and go! I love that it has utensils and different compartments, its a great container and I use it daily!
This awesome foot spa has water jets and raised nodes that gently massage my feet, it really does feel like a spa experience! It has a splash guard that keeps the water from spilling and splashing I'm soaking my feet while in front of the tv too!
Just like they use at the nail salon, these pumice stones help to remove callusses and rough skin leaving your feet soft and smooth. These ones are double sided and each side has a different coarseness, I really love these!
This is the hair dye I now use and I love it! I have a few greys around my face and they cover well with this product. Everyone is different, this works for me but there may be something else that is better for you out there!
Give this mindful spending challenge a try...it could change your life!
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