Rustic Vegan Mama and The No Spend Year (as a Family of 6!)

Rustic Vegan Mama and The NO SPEND YEAR ( a family of 6!)

Happy New Year!!! May 2021 be SO much better than 2020!

We have embarked on a huge adventure this year (2021). A no spend YEAR! A whole year without spending on non essentials. No new clothes, no toys, no new housewares, no coffees out…etc. You may be wondering why we ever suffer such a needless circumstance? How did we get to this decision? What are our rules? While there are many ways to do a no spend year, this is what our family has chosen and this is our journey through it.

Why?

I want to start off by stating how addicted I was to shopping. I am a person who admits to dealing with emotions super poorly in the past. I used to struggle with emotional eating, don’t talk about anything till I blow up and and of course, shopped when I was feeling low. If I could just get SOMETHING, I would feel happier. I did feel happier…for a time. But then the happiness would fade and I would need to go out again. Bonus joy if it was on clearance. Id hide the receipts and find any excuse under the sun to justify it. Let me just say that Zachary and I have an AMAZING marriage. We are so honest with each other with everything…except this. But over the past couple of years, my husband and I have been embarking on a mission of less. Less stuff to take up what was so very precious to us…time. Less stuff to cause stress and take joy from spending time with each other. Less spending so that we can put money towards the things that really matter. Less secret spending so that we can restore honesty into our relationship. Less spending so we can teach our children the real value of money and how to manage it best. And this is the PERFECT year for no spending.

Why Now?

We decided that this was the year to do it. Over the last year, our basement flooded causing a lot of damage and requiring quite a cut of our income to salvage it and make it back into a place where our kids could play again. We honestly, did a lot of stress spending. Our 4th child was born this year and many many complications accompanied. There were complications with Zachary’s work and our child’s ability to feed. Plus…it was 2020…hello pandemic! It was a stressful year and we totally took it out on our bank account. So already feeling the drain, we looked ahead to this year and what it would bring right around New Years. Whatever your stance is on COVID, we saw that it was not going away anytime soon. We are on lockdown! No going places, no seeing people. Perfect, all places we often spent money. With much of the temptation out of the way, we decided it was the time. Plus, we are weird and love gargantuan
challenges.

How did we decide the rules?

Zachary and I sat down together and came up with a list of things we spent on, the essentials and non essentials. Next we looked at what our values are as a family. You might not think that the gym is an essential expenditure but one of our values is health and physical fitness not to mention that Zachary’s job requires him to maintain physical fitness. The gym is an essential to us as is our son’s competitive gymnastics fees. Those things stayed. We also included homeschool supplies ( although kept it minimal). We decided on rules based on things that made sense to our home and our values but cut out the majority of expenses. We no longer eat at restaurants, get coffee at cafes or treats at the gas station.

Will it be hard? You bet! Will it be worth it? I really believe that it will! I am planning to post updates every now and then on the blog. Questions? Comments? Send them in!