No Spend and Controlled Spend Days- Why It Works (for me)

The Happy Homeowner posts about her spending every week and lists her No Spend Days. A couple months ago, Money Beagle questioned whether tracking No Spend Days really helped anyone save money. Since I’ve been tracking No Spend and Controlled Spend days for over a year and a half now, I thought I’d talk about my experience, and why I think its valuable, even if it doesn’t save me significant amounts of money.
Let’s start with the fact that I control our day to day finances. I track our spending and make sure the bills are paid. Major financial decisions are made by hubby and I as a couple, but the day to day business of managing our money falls to me. This means that if I want to spend a $1 here on a candy bar, or $3 there on a chai tea latte, no one but me has to know. I am accountable to no one.
However, I am also a very goal oriented person. So if I set myself a goal of having 12 No Spend Days in a month, then I actually think twice about whether or not I really need to go to the vending machine or coffee stand, because spending the money makes it harder for me to reach my goal.
Does this save us a lot of money? No. It saves anywhere from $5-20 a month- not much at all in the grand scheme of things and easily absorbed in to my allowance.
Where the No Spend/Controlled Spend (days when I plan to spend money, but only spend what I planned) really come in handy are in dealing with cash flow. We’re doing pretty well, but for someone living closer to the edge than us, this can, in fact, save hundreds of dollars a month by avoiding overdraft charges.
Let me explain.
When the hubby was still working, we were both paid every two weeks, on opposite Fridays. That meant that a substantial amount of money showed up in our checking account every Friday. Cash flow was never an issue.
Even when hubby was on UE, payments were made weekly. Even though the amount being deposited on weeks I didn’t get a paycheck wasn’t much, it still meant that we had a money influx every week and kept cash flow issues to a minimum.
But then UE stopped. Now, there’s only money coming in to our accounts every two weeks. In the first 4 days of a month, we have bills due that amount to greater than one of my paychecks.
Now, I make a good salary- about as much on my own as we were making as a couple when we bought our current house. We have the money to pay all of our bills without a problem, as long as we pay attention to cash flow.
By working toward keeping the majority of our spending planned, we maintain better control of our cash flow. If I know when money is going to be spent, I can always make sure the money will be there.
If it looks like we’ll be short on money over a weekend, I can transfer some in from savings, because weekends are when we do our shopping. But if we have only $100 in the account between Monday and Friday when I get paid, I don’t have to worry about it because we aren’t spending money.
For me, trying for and tracking No Spend Days isn’t about saving money, it’s about controlling our money, which I find just as valuable as we move forward.