As a personal finance blogger, I read a ton of financial content. More than I probably should. And about once every other week or so, I come across the advice to try the enticing and mystical “no-spend day”.
The concept of a no-spend day is simple: you hold back from purchasing anything on that given day. Day starts, you spend nothing that day, day ends, mission complete.
The promised payoff for exercising this is that it will provide some sort of frugal enlightenment, forever changing your over-consumption habits. And it’s an attractive ploy because not spending for a single day is really quite simple.
Every time I see this advice, I cringe.
Sure, no-spend days are actionable. However, I find them to be effectively equivalent to the following advice…
“Don’t eat for a day, so you can lose weight!”
Kind of pointless, because of what’s likely to happen the next day: you double your typical daily intake because you’re freaking starving!
How is a “no-spend day” any different?
When you think about it, what is the point of delaying a behavior for a day? The average American lifespan is 79 years (we’re a disappointing 31st in the world, btw). That’s 28,835 days. What does abstaining from spending for one day out of 28,835 really do for you other than just delay existing habits until the next day?
Now, if that one day turns into one week, which turns into one month, and fundamentally changes ones purchasing behaviors forever? Then you’ve got something. But most people are not going to make that leap from point A to point B.
If you really want to change, you need to re-program your relationship with stuff. When you change your relationship with stuff, you change the purchasing behavior that led to the over-consumption (and consequentially, keep more of your money).
The only way I know how to effectively do this is to:
- Examine the real reasons behind your motivation to make the purchase (and ask yourself if previous purchases in the past really provided sustained happiness).
- Separate wants from needs.
- Acknowledge the short and long-term benefit of holding back (the short-term is you immediately save money, the long-term is that it multiplies many times over due to the power of compound investment returns and your future self will thank you).
- Learn and improve.
Real change takes real work. It’s not a one-day stunt that sounds cool in a blog headline. Maybe that’s why it’s so uncommon.
Related Posts:
“What?! There isn’t “one simple trick to saving trillions of dollars” that doesn’t require motivation, dedication, and self-reflection? Well, this article clearly isn’t going to go viral, so it must be false anyway.” /s
Thank you for your writing. People don’t enjoy reality checks, because a lot of people don’t want to live in reality to being with.
I would argue I find the no spend days to be very effective… but I typically pair about 20-25 NSDs together in a row.
Ha Ha. I like your comment. A real reality check.
Haha – I like this.
I don’t know… I think no-spend days have their merits. Certainly they can’t be your ONLY tactic for improving your finances, and no, a single no-spend day surrounded by high-spending days isn’t going to make a noticeable change in your checking account. But I think for a lot of people, we spend pretty mindlessly. A cup of coffee on the way to work, not because you really need or want it, but just because you’re in the habit of grabbing one. A $10 salad for lunch that you could have made at home, but you didn’t think to set aside five minutes this morning to put it together. A lip balm at the pharmacy on your walk home because “well, why not.”
No-spend days aren’t so much about the dollar amount that you’re saving, as they are about the mindfulness of noticing when you would spend, and noticing whether or not you miss those things. In the above examples, most people would be perfectly happy NOT spending on those things, but it takes a little forethought to bring your own lunch to work, and it takes some mental presence to decide whether or not you REALLY want that coffee or chapstick. Having the no-spend rule for a day might make you realize that the pre-work coffee isn’t as necessary as you once thought, and delaying that chapstick purchase by a day or two might be enough time for you to find the four half-used ones already rolling in the bottom of your purse.
I do need to fix my relationship with stuff. I tend to never want to spend money because I always expect the worst can happen. I just need a healthy balance.
I’d like to quote items #2 & #3 here:
“2. Separate wants from needs.
3. Acknowledge the short and long-term benefit of holding back (the short-term is you immediately save money, the long-term is that it multiplies many times over due to the power of compound investment returns and your future self will thank you).”
A lot of people can say, I’d like a newer computer. Most people don’t “need” a faster newer computer, but most want it.
Time is money. One needs to evaluate the savings of having a faster more capable computer over saving money w/ an older computer.