It’s good to have a plan right? Right! Well this week, the plan was to have a no-spend week. To be fair, it started out well until…..

The Importance of Meal Planning

Let’s start off by making you aware that we are advocates of meal planning, It has many benefits including saving time, energy, money, and frustrations. We do know of the many benefits but sometimes we are our own worst enemies. I’ll explain what I mean. So one of the meals we had planned to make this week required chicken breast. Now we have lots of chicken in the freezer and usually the night before the meal, we would retrieve the meat from the freezer and allow it to thaw overnight in the fridge. Well due to an oversight, I forgot to get the chicken out of the freezer so the first puncture in the tire of the ‘no spend week plan’ happened as a result of this.

There is a supermarket in walking distance from our home so I made the decision to go there to get just some fresh chicken breasts. Well, you know how it is when you go to get one thing and end up getting a few other things. So in the end, I ended up getting other things and spending a little over £13 although the chicken was only £2.29. Well, it would only go downhill from there.

Life’s Necessities

Have you ever planned a no-spend week and stuck to it? We have tried on a number of occasions and to be fair, I can’t really remember ending the week without spending at all. I’m leaning toward the view that when you have a no-spend week, you should be able to spend on certain necessities without it ‘counting’ as a ‘spend’. Well, I think that spending on petrol should fall in this category. So we needed petrol for the car and had to purchase this early in the week. This cost £40.06 (and the gauge just went a little over half a tank!)

Sticking to the Plan

It is important to stick to well-thought-out and established plans. So that’s what we did. A service light had come up in the car the prior week and so the car had to be taken into the Vauxhall dealership for the servicing. I do have a service plan with them that I pay monthly, but according to them, this was outside of the plan. I was quoted £378.16 for diagnosing and fixing the problem. And we were without a car for a few days. This though might have been a blessing in disguise. No doubt if we had the car, we’d be on the road and we would be spending. On the bright side, the car got a ‘free’ wash. They managed to reduce the cost of the repairs as a ‘favor’ to me. I ended up paying £335 for the repair.

They also said that I needed pads and discs and it would cost me a little under £350 to replace those too although they would be ok for the next 6 months or so. I politely declined. I bought them already for under £30 and I know I can get them fitted for about £20. So I will just make sure those are done before the next service or MOT is due. What a malarky eh?

Overall, I think we made a valiant effort to have a no-spend week. We did end up spending but none of it was frivolous.

Our Encouragement

We would like to impress upon you that it is worthwhile to have a plan for some period of time where you are determined to spend nothing (in terms of money). This is a period of economic uncertainty we think and things are going to get even harder. Save where you can spend wisely and instill in those of the younger generation these same principles so that they too can reap the benefits.

Thanks for reading our No Spend Week Plan (although it was a failure) We hope you were inspired and thanks as always to Anne who allowed us to join in with this linkie each week. See you soon,

Jo and Leisa