I used to do no spend days, weeks, months. Usually with the weeks and months I’d allow for spending on essentials only (milk and vegetables) and eat down what was in my pantry and freezer. Sometimes it was out of necessity, but sometimes I was trying to be frugal. I quickly learned it often wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
The Pantry Challenge can be great if you don’t rotate and eat up the older stuff that will otherwise expire or become freezer burned. And I agree that No Spend Days can help people become more mindful of their spending. But, I’m part of a January frugality challenge and I have to say that it seems that most people are really, really clued out. The person running it does not command that they use No Spend Days or Pantry Challenges, but some of them have imposed these things on themselves and then when they can’t meet these not really frugal anyway expectations, they freak out like they’ve failed the greater challenge so far. It’s so strange.
What I found when I was using these sorts of gimmicks was that I was missing out on really good sales that overall would lower my grocery budget. Not for that week or month maybe, but amortized over a few months or a year certainly. I loved those Bulk Barn coupons where I could save $3 if I spent $10 and it became a game to get as close to $10 as possible without going under and then I’d print off another coupon (at the library since I had no printer and the first two print pages every day were free) and go back another day. I missed out on a few of those during No Spend Month. Or there might be an awesome loss leader that was a staple of our diets that I was giving up. I was actually costing myself money.
I would only eat down my pantry when times were really lean like at the end of the summer when I hadn’t been paid for two months or if I had a big, unexpected bill, so I never actually thought I was saving money by eating from the pantry. The saving part was in getting the good deals in the first place. If you eat it, you will need to replace it eventually unless you plan never to eat again.
It might be better to pay down credit cards and thus reduce the amount of interest paid if someone is carrying credit card debt, but even still, at some point you are going to need to spend the money on necessities, and the ROI of getting loss leaders most likely can beat even high interest rates on credit cards.
People are often not rational. I was always mystified by the debt snowball approach whereby instead of paying off your debt with the highest interest first, you pay off the smallest debt first so that you can get the psychological boost of having paid off a debt. But from a purely financial standpoint, that is the wrong approach. Again, it’s another false economy. It’s so weird. It’s like saying, “I know you aren’t reasonable and rational, so here’s an approach that will allow you to continue being unreasonable and irrational because there’s no way you can do better than that.” And people lap it up.
And even more odd is the support people are getting in this group for justifying their shitty spending habits. It’s supposed to be one month of being really, really frugal. And yet, one person posted how her dishwasher broke and she was thinking of getting one of the most expensive brands to replace it. A ton of people reassured her that she should get the most expensive kind. One person told her that she should get it because “There are certain things you just don’t skimp on.” A dishwasher is one of those things? During a really frugal month? Really? Then someone else encouraged her to get not just the expensive brand of dishwasher but to replace all of her appliances with that brand. What?!?!?!? I guess it never occurred to them that a dishwasher is not a necessity (although then they argue that they actually save money because they use less hot water than hand washing because everyone needs to handwash dishes in a reckless, spendy fashion. There clearly is no other way).
I could go on and on.
I had hoped to find inspiration in this group and I’m not finding it. Ever since the Mr. Money Mustache forums became a place where people justify their ridiculous spending habits and get support for doing so, I feel like I haven’t fit in anywhere. The bloggers I follow are inspirational, but their communities are not. I guess that’s why the bloggers are the gurus.
/end rant
A Canadian Life Simplified 
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