No Spend January Week 1 Recap - Simple Healthy Affordable

One week into my no spend month and I’m still hanging on!

Keep reading to see:

What we ate
What we spent
What I wanted to buy but didn’t
What we’re planning going forward

What We Ate

For breakfast we basically ate some variation of the same thing every day: eggs. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining because I love eggs! We ate omelettes, breakfast bowls, plain old fried eggs, etc. And one day we had homemade apple cinnamon oatmeal! Lunches are never anything special around here. Usually just leftovers or the beloved “snack tray”.

Here’s what we ending up eating for dinners:

Sunday– Cauliflower Fried Rice

Monday– Red Beans & Rice

Tuesday– Leftover Red Beans & Rice

Wednesday– GF Waffles & Sausage

Thursday– Smothered Pork Chops with Rice & Green Beans

Friday– Dinner at my parents!

Saturday– Taco Salad

This wasn’t my original meal plan, but our schedule is always changing. So we have no choice but to go with the flow! Given how this week went, I likely would have gone out to eat or picked up take out AT LEAST once. But probably twice if I’m being honest.

What We Spent

So…did we make it a full week with zero unplanned spending??

The answer: no.

Ok..so I totally forgot to buy dog food last week! In all my preparing of human food I definitely forgot about the animals. I’m terrible about keeping up with dog food and it always results in a late night run to the store which is exactly what happened this week!

Here’s a break down of my spending this week! *Not including bills, giving, and medical expenses.*

Weekly Produce Pick Up: $42.09

The Dog Food I Forgot to Buy Last Week: $35.11

TOTAL: $77.20

New Plan

Originally I had planned to spend $25 each week buying fresh produce, milk, and eggs. A couple years ago I used to be able to buy produce for a week for $25 no problem. But I clearly didn’t remember that grocery prices have skyrocketed since then. The eggs I buy from Costco have gone up 54% in 3 weeks.

PSA: If you haven’t had a chance to google the reason for the egg shortage/price increase: apparently it’s the avian flu. If you have chickens in your backyard consider yourself very lucky!!

Once I started looking at grocery prices I knew that $25 wasn’t going to be enough. Even going as cheaply as I could, you saw that I spent $42.09 buying the bare minimal!

Going forward, I want to say that I’ll try to spend less than $50 each week. I’ll do my best! But I don’t want to skimp too much on fruits and vegetables!

This week I shopped at Walmart. Next week I’ll head back to Sprouts and see what I can get while trying to only shop what’s on sale!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m very pleased with one week into no spending! If I hadn’t shared my challenge publicly I probably would have found some reason to give up already.

Here’s my guesstimate of the money we saved by not spending this week:

Eating out x2 + snacks between basketball games: $100

Contraption to mop my floors that I think I need: $35

New shoes for one of the kids: $30

Replacing Christmas toy that’s already broken: $15

Unnecessary trip to Sprouts: $25

TOTAL: $205

That is a very rough estimate and I am PLEASED!

So what do y’all think? Will I make it through week two??

Make sure to follow along on Instagram if you’re not already! 23 more days to go!