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No Buy Month

January 29, 2009 · By Sandy Smith

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So Natalie over at the Frugalista Files is taking up the No Buy Month challenge. I heard about this challenge from Suzy Orman and actually started it at the beginning of the year. So this means no credit card use for one week, no eating out for one month and dammit, there was a third but I keep forgetting what it is!

Budget

Anyway I’ve been good at it so far! My one bump in the road came when I got sick earlier this month. Medication and copays come to about $160 total but I had enough cash in the bank to cover it. Before starting this I would NEVER have had enough cash and probably would have been trying to Nyquil myself. Thankfully I didn’t because it turns out that I had a bad case of bronchitis.
So do you think you can take the challenge? Start with baby steps. Can you not use your credit card for one week? How about not buying anything but the absolute essentials for one week and building up to a month? Money can escape from our fingers $1 at a time without us even realizing it. It was just so nice to be able to pay for my emergency with cash! So that brings me to another thing. I really need to tackle not having an emergency fund. How do I go about that while trying to whittle down debt? Hmm.

About the Author

Sandy Smith

I started this blog years ago as a way of keeping myself accountable to my own debt reduction plans. Now I'm using this site to help others get out of debt, and learn about personal finance so that they can live their best lives.

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