What are the rules of a no-spend challenge?

You freeze one or two named spending categories for a set stretch of days — not all spending, since rent and bills still go out. The rules worth writing down are the ones that settle arguments in advance: which categories are frozen, whether groceries count, what you do on the day you break it, and where the money you did not spend actually goes.

How much does a 30-day no-spend challenge save?

It depends entirely on which categories you froze, which is why no honest answer exists in advance. The tracker leaves a line for the amount you avoided each day, so you finish with your own figure rather than someone else's average — and that number is usually not the one you would have guessed.

Do groceries count as spending?

Keep the grocery envelope funded at its normal amount and freeze eating out. Treating food as one category is the most common way this collapses, because eating is not optional and a nine-dollar coffee is. If the grocery number quietly doubles during the challenge, that is the restaurant money finding a different door.

The 30-day no-spend challenge

Every other savings challenge decides the amount in advance, and the only question left is whether you make the deposit. This one has no amounts at all. What it has is an argument every single day about whether the thing in your hand counts — and that argument, not willpower, is what ends it in week two.

So the rules below are written as decisions to make before day one, because making them on day nine is how it finishes. There is no figure here for what you will save: it depends entirely on what you froze, and every site that quotes one is quoting someone else’s month.

1. Decide the categories, not the amount

A no-spend challenge is not no money leaving your account — rent still goes out, the phone bill still goes out. It is a freeze on one or two categories you choose. Name them out loud before you start: eating out and clothes, say, or anything that arrives in a box. A challenge with no named categories becomes a challenge about whether this particular purchase was really necessary, and that is an argument you lose.

2. Groceries are in, restaurants are out

The most common way this collapses is treating food as one thing. Eating is not optional and a nine-dollar coffee is, so they cannot share a rule. Keep the grocery envelope funded at its normal amount and freeze the eating-out one. If the grocery number quietly doubles during the challenge, that is the eating-out money finding a different door.

3. Write down what you did not spend

The day you nearly bought something and did not is the only data this challenge produces. Note the amount. At the end you have a real figure rather than a feeling, and it is usually a different number than you would have guessed — which is the point of doing it rather than reading about it.

4. Decide now what happens when you break it

You will break it. Decide in advance whether that ends the challenge or costs you a day, and write that down too. Every version of this that survives a month has a restart rule; every version that does not, ends the first time someone buys lunch.

5. Put the money somewhere before it is spent

Money that stays in the current account is money the challenge did not save. Move the amount you avoided into the envelope or account it was for, on the day, while the decision is still fresh. A no-spend month that ends with a slightly larger balance and no plan is a month you will spend twice.

Written by Larder, who make the iPhone app the calculators are built from.