Our no spend month of March is over! I'm very happy about that. It was kind of a long month. It was well worth it to come out with over $200 in money that could have been just spent away.

Total Funds $957.96
Total Spent $756.88
Total Saved $201.08(21%)

Human Food: $355.13 (37%)
Fuel: $163.69 (17%)
Birthday: $139.34 (14.5%)
Health: $28.74 (3%)
Cat Food: $28.61 (3%)
Appliances: $26.37 (2.8%)
Car Washes: $15 (1.6%)

The amount of cash that we had to work with is simply based on our normal budget. While DH is away, our spending cash is about $500 per pay period (2x per month). It is often very tight with spending anyway, but it keeps us in check. I pay all the bills due during the pay period, set aside our $500 for spending and put the rest towards our goal(s). Right now that goal is our truck savings. In March we saved $2800 towards the truck. Oh, make that $3000, since I added the $200 we didn't spend to that goal.

I will admit there are some non necessities in our spending. The car washes were a Groupon deal that I couldn't pass up, since I knew I would need and use them in the future. So far, I've only used one of three car washes I purchased.

I also had quite a bit of snacks in the grocery spending that could definitely be considered non necessities. Coffee, cookies, brownies, soda, chips to name a few. The grocery category does include a few non food purchases such as dishwasher detergent and hair products. Those types of things were minimal.

Fuel was a big expense, but necessary as I drive my girls to school everyday. We probably saved here though because we had spring break for one week and had less driving.

Remember those birthday expenses were an exception for the no spend month. I would have spent this same money on her birthday even if it had not been a no spend month. But wow. If she didn't have a birthday I would have saved even more!! This was the only time we got take away food, which was around $35.

The appliance was the toaster that I felt was necessary after our 15 year old toaster quite on us early in the month. It's a nice stainless steel and works great. No regrets!

The cat food expense is only every three months and just happened to fall during our no spend month. My fat cats could have probably waited a month without food. Just kidding!!

It has been an interesting experience, one that I may repeat at another point in the future. I would highly recommend that everyone attempt a no spend month once. Just once. And not just for the savings, but also to observe our spending habits, patterns and thought processes about spending.