Happy Hump Day!
We’re thrilled to announce that our No-Spend Challenge 2025 is starting Saturday, February 1st, and we’ve got allll the tips to help make your NSC a breeze.
Whether you want to save money, crush debt, or elevate your next vacay, a NSC is a great tool for trimming excess spending!
So what are our favorite NSC hacks, what are the rules, and what’s the duration of this NSC challenge? Read on 👇
🏆 Steps for a Successful No-Spend Challenge
A no-spend challenge is a short-term method for saving money, identifying our spending behaviors, and look for ways to improve our relationship with our finances in the long-term.
We recommend doing the challenge for one month–there’s enough time to pin down habits, but not so long that it’s unsustainable.
It just so happens that we’re doing this challenge in February, the shortest month of the year, for all our newbie friends to dip their toes in the NSC waters!
One of the key things to keep in mind is that a NSC is a dopamine fast.
🔎 What is dopamine? It’s a chemical in your brain that creates that feel-good feeling when you engage in a pleasurable activity. It’s also integral in our memory & reward systems, which is why we want to keep doing the thing, even if it’s detrimental to us (like overspending).
Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke dives into dopamine’s role in addiction in her novel Dopamine Nation, a must-read for all Frugal Friends! 📙
By engaging in a NSC, we’re removing the reinforcement in our memory that dopamine created that would motivate us to spend more.
With that out of the way, here are some tangible tips to make your NSC successful!
✅ Review the last 30 days of spending and decide what you won’t spend on this month. No one’s saying you can’t get groceries, or that gas isn’t a necessary item. YOU make up the rules of your NSC. 🤗
✅ Replace shopping with another activity! If you’re busy doing something else, you won’t think about spending as much. We recommend activities like:
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Decluttering the house
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Learning a new skill
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Reading a book (highly recommend Buy What You Love Without Going Broke!)
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Borrow a puzzle or board game from the library
✅ Do it with a friend or partner. A NSC is a way to gamify your finances in the short-term, and what better way to do that than make it a friendly competition!
✅ Save your extra $$$ in a High-Yield Savings Account. A NSC is a great way to buff up your sinking funds for the year, and right now, CIT is offering newcomers a stellar interest rate of 4.00% APY! **
Spending is a skill and you can learn to master it. If you’ve ever struggled with being unable to stick to a budget or felt guilty about spending on something you enjoy, Jen and Jill’s debut book is going to be your next favorite read.
Sincerely,
Kim
⭐️⭐️ P.S. Want to share all this goodness with your friends AND earn cool Frugal Friends merch?
**Means this is a sponsored or affiliate section. We may earn a small fee or commission when you choose to try one of our sponsor or affiliate partners. But opinions are still 1000% our own.
