Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Spending is a Non-Issue

I came across a post about a "No Spend" challenge on the blog Budgets Are Sexy. This guy has some entertaining writing, and we have a few things in common besides both having a personal finance blog. He's about my age (I'm a few years older), he just got married on Saturday (I'll be married in 2 months), and he lives in the DC area too. However, I do not (thankfully) share his spending problem. Apparently, from reading this post and a few others that are linked from it, "No Spend" challenges are something people try hard to do.

Don't mistake this for self-righteousness, but that wouldn't be much a challenge for me at all. Somehow I'm just not much of a spender. I do on occasion spend what Budgets Are Sexy calls "discretionary income" on "random crap." (Seriously, I just took a whole car load of "random crap" to Goodwill after it didn't sell at the yard sale on Saturday.) But over all, I don't think that's a real problem for me.

I looked at my spending by category in Microsoft Money for the past 30 days, and it appears that I don't have much of spending issue in terms of random crap. In fact, I spent just under $5200 in the past 30 days, and 41% of that was related to the wedding (which at this point is actually money from my parents) or preparing for married life (i.e. helping break a lease). I did spend about $10 on a new pot and some soil for a big plant someone on Freecycle gave me. The rest was pretty much the cost of every day living (i.e. rent, food, gas, Metro fare, utilities, insurance, taxes, etc.).

Wow - that sounds pretty boring! No cool shoes or indulgent trips to Starbucks...just a plastic flower pot and some dirt. It's not that extreme every month, but it's also not like I feel deprived in anyway. However, I'm very thankful that I don't have a spending problem because we're going to need that money for more important things in the future, like a house.

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2 comments:

Kate said...

I've spent about $50 on books and clothes this year so far. It's not been easy, but it's been great for the bank account. An added bonus is less stuff coming into the house. I get books from the library and then return them. So, it's been positive in many ways.

Betsy said...

Wow, Kate - that's really impressive! And yes, less stuff coming into the house is usually a good thing. Of course, right now for me, I'm in a huge transition of new stuff coming in and old stuff going out (either to the trash, Goodwill, yard sale, or moving to my sister's new place). I'm looking forward to getting things really settled this fall!