That’s a Wrap on “No Spend March!”
by Katy on April 1, 2025 · 37 comments
We’ve finally made it through the thirty one days of No/Low Spend March and it was easier than I though it would be. I’d been worried that my niece’s weeklong visit would put a kink in my plans, but she was game for the challenge. My normal routine would’ve been to treat her to Portland’s booming restaurant and bakery culture, but instead I treated her to my focused attention and home cooked treats and meals. She did buy herself a couple of espresso drinks at Tabor Space, but otherwise didn’t have to spend any of her own money.
Here’s how it went:
• My husband and I spent $349.95 on groceries and food for the month. No money spent on restaurant meals, not even a Costco hotdog. I was treated to one restaurant meal while my niece was in town, but only after hosting two family dinner parties.
• I ate one dinner at my father and step-mother’s house, but brought two half-gallons of Tillamook ice cream, which cost more than a frugal home cooked meal.
• I tried to avoid shopping at corporate grocery stores, but picked up a few items here and there from nearby Fred Meyer, (Kroger) Safeway, H Mart and Trader Joe’s. However, this was only to buy a couple of specific items, not to “do my grocery shopping.” Think bananas and lettuce, not a full cart of groceries. I did two big ol’ employee owned Winco shopping trips, which supplied most of our food.
• My husband did one bigger Fred Meyer trip for his set work lunch supplies.
• I could’ve manipulated the month’s spending by draining our pantry/freezer reserves, but that wasn’t the plan. I even stocked up on sale items and some finicky to buy things that we get at H Mart.
• I spent $560.91 on two (two!) tires and a front end alignment. I know it’s money well spent, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be supremely irritated at the expense.
• I spent $15.98 at Goodwill to buy two chairs to resell. Otherwise I did no recreational spending. No Target, no Amazon, no random online shopping. The chair I thrifted earlier in the month was paid for with store credit.
Otherwise, we paid our normal expenses such as the mortgage, utilities, insurance, internet, cell service, gasoline and a couple of miscellaneous things like the $18.96 I spent on a Lyft when I needed to be across town while my husband was using our car.
Does the end of the “no spend challenge” mean that I’ll suddenly rush out to buy the things I held off on? Absolutely not! My fridge is a little on the empty side, but I was able to put together a satisfying pasta dinner last night using last week’s clearance-priced produce and my free rigatoni. I even had a big chunk of Winco parmesan, which we grated over the pasta. No deprivation here!
Did you try and bring your spending down last month? Please share your stories in the comments section below.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately I did not actively participate in the no-spend/low-spend month of March. We had already scheduled a long awaited remodel of our (mostly) 1960’s era hall bathroom. We did already have the funds to pay for it & a budgeted amount set. I mostly tried to do my usual frugal things & make any purchases that were on sale. I’ll probably pick another month for my personal low-spend challenge.
Bought nothing from Amazon in February or March. Nada. Zilch. Actually nothing since January 26. The only things I bought in March were groceries and gas. And one lunch out with friends. We get together every month. Always money well spent.
Congrats on a month well spent! (Oops, wrong verb. “Well done,” perhaps?) But your outcome is impressive — an inspiration to us all.
Other than buying a week’s worth of groceries at the (now-defunct) grocery store run by a local ministry, and shying away from the big box stores you are boycotting, I didn’t do all that well. Maybe a B-minus at best, but probably a C grade. I avoided Amazon, but I never buy from Amazon anyway. (Sadly, the ministry’s grocery store closed down and yesterday was its final day of operation.)
This March, I mostly bought food but I had to get a few things in relation to my flooring installation. I bought items I didn’t want to wait for. I looked at the thrift stores and Habitat Re-store first for items, then to the local “Mom and Pop” hardware stores when possible. I didn’t do any “recreational shopping”. So my Low Spend March is not a total frugal fail. I will try to do better this month.
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If we were doing the FFT today, one of my wins would be that I went to Aldi for groceries and they had their store-brand (“Chef’s Cupboard”) regular sized (10.75 ounces) cans of condensed tomato soup on for 14 cents each. (I had to ask the clerk “is this for real?” and her answer was “Yes!”. BTW, I also checked the expiration date, and it is good until Oct. 2026.) Needless to say, I stocked up with store-brand tomato soup — sorry, Campbell’s, but the off-brand price was too mmm-mmm good to pass up. Don’t know if that’s just for our store or region, but those of you who have Aldi stores may want to check and see if they are running that sale, as well.
That is an amazing price on tomato soup! I’ll be at an Aldi either Thursday or Friday and I’ll check to see if they have a sale that’s anything like that.
Home improvements like your flooring go in the “investment” category!
Great job on the no spend/low spend month, Katy! I’m especially impressed with how well you did when your niece visited. Having family and friends visit – which is quite often for us in summer – is almost always a big budget buster. I’ll be re-reading your posts about your nieces visit and taking notes!
Thoughts from my own low spend March:
1. We spent around $300 for groceries. $600 is normal for us, so as I mentioned before the $300 we didn’t spend went straight into savings.
2. I only went to Kroger once, and that was to pick up two free product coupon items: frozen pizza and cream cheese. I spent the bulk of my shopping dollars at a smaller, local chain. The quality was better on many items and the stores were very well stocked.
3. I tried my best not to shop online at Amazon and Target. We’d fallen into the trap of thinking “we live in the middle of nowhere, so we have to.” Which is nonsense. Once a month we’re at Costco, with the nearest one being almost three hours away. And it’s in a decent sized city. A city that has a huge variety of stores, and where we can get just about anything we need; we only need to wait a bit. We really needed to lose the “instant gratification, I-want-it-NOW” mindset we’d developed.
4. That being said, I did make one purchase from Amazon but we honestly tried to buy local first. A part on our snowblower broke, and the snowblower is a necessity as we live in a snowbelt, and we’re old. First we stopped at a store in a nearby town. They said they could order the part and it would be in at the end of the week. Since there was no snow in the forecast, we figured we could wait. Unfortunately, the end of the week happened and the part hadn’t come in. And OF COURSE, now there was a big snowstorm in the forecast for the middle of the following week. For a ton of wet, heavy, snow. No way could we safely clear our long driveway with shovels. We ordered the part on Amazon, and it arrived before the snow storm. I had an Amazon gift card from my pre-Amazon-avoidance days, and used that to pay for the part. We did pick up the part from the local store when it came in, so money was spent for that. That same part had broken once before, so having a spare is a good thing.
I think your snowblower part is the perfect example of when to order from Amazon. Instead of recreational shopping, you used it as the last resort. And the local shop still got your business as well.
I deleted my Amazon account last month, but had made only one purchase there in 2025 before that happened. I’d been upset with the company for a while over the declining quality of the offerings.
I think the fates laughed at me trying for a low-spend month, as we’ve gushed money on car repairs, home repairs, veterinary expenses, and extra groceries for sick people and a sick dog, but I held my shopping to our local grocery store, hardware store, drugstore, Goodwill and Aldi.
I made only one purchase at Amazon for a shower head filter after much googling to find it somewhere else and 1 box of Rennies which I could not find without overseas shipping. Nothing at Target! Replaced some skin care but night directly from the manufacturer instead of Amazon or Target. We did visit family in Oregon so I helped out the local small businesses economy in Eugene but time with family was worth it!
Great job Katy!
1. I did eat out twice in March: fries and a soda ($10) for cribbage night and lunchtime sushi special with my kid. (he was here for a doctors appt and I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks) neither of us had sushi in a while ($34).
2. I finally went to a bra fitting and bought myself a new bra. I knew the old bra I was wearing was the wrong size. And I went from a C cup to an E cup. Bras that big, cost me 82 bucks.
3. My overall cash spending went from $19 a day down to $15 a day. That includes the bra, eating out and the $71 I spent refilling my son and his BF’s fridge. (They were having refrigerator problems and the repair tech told them to unplug it. Wait a few days and plug it back in (the freezer was not allowing the cooling element to get to the fridge) so when it was plugged back in and working fine, I brought them their frozen stuff back and then took them shopping to help them refill their fridge
4. If you remove the $71 I paid for the boys food, then I would’ve only spent $244 for the entire month for food. I’m happy with that.
5. I did not break the law by offering people money to vote a way I wanted them to
I feel your pain for large bras! I, too, need a bigger size, and it’s expensive!
I did pretty well with the no spend month. I got started the moment the inauguration of Cheeto went through. All I could think is that I’ll do my part to shrink the economy.
With the exception of a birthday present, all non-food things I purchased in March were purchased second hand.
Most of my Fred Meyer purchases came in red mesh bags. Haha. (Bargain produce!) The best finds were a $1 cantaloupe and a $1 honeydew melon! Luxurious!
I’m having a great time with it, and I can’t imagine doing anything different.
I wasn’t able to do a low spend as we had our attic and subfloor air sealed and insulated but I do consider that an investment future me will be grateful for. No Amazon, Whole Foods (owned by Amazon), or Target purchases though. I am diligently looking for alternatives for things I was regularly buying from Amazon.
That’s hardly an impulsive purchase! Well done on avaiding that Schmeff Schmezos guy!
Katy, your meticulous record-keeping puts mine to shame; I’m not nearly so precise. But I can say that the balances on my two credit cards for March came to more than $800 less than my recent average. I’ll try to keep up the good work–although I admit that I yielded to the temptation of that “Pedantic Janeite Killjoy” t-shirt I mentioned a comment or two ago.
And, as noted in several previous comments, I dumped Amazon almost 2 years ago; I almost never shop at Target and certainly didn’t in March; and I avoid Walmart, Hobby Lobby, and others like the plague.
Ha, it’s not exactly a spreadsheet! You spent $800 less than normal?! Color me impressed!
I do have a bad habit of stockpiling groceries and other things when I don’t really need to stockpile. (I’m not a candidate for “Hoarders” yet, but I do have a few tendencies in that direction.) So in March, I cut way, way back on the stockpiling and concentrated on using up the current supplies. And I also did next to no thrifting. Finally, the weather and my broken rib helped by keeping me home. 🙂
I didn’t do so well with my Low/No Spend March. I’m 66 days away from my wedding and it seems like I have to buy EVERYTHING. This month I’m going to double down on my frugality in other areas of life. Fortunately, everything for our wedding has been paid for in cash. That said, I paid off a credit card on the last day of March. I can work on paying off the next one, which should be paid off by August!
I have not purchased anything on Amazon in years. I do a lot of eBay and ThriftBooks for the hard-to-find books my library can’t get in for me. Unfortunately, I don’t have a local employee-owned grocery store. I shop between Walmart, Aldi, and Weis.
Congrats on paying off a debt!!!
What fun to have a wedding to put together!
I’ve been inspired to do a no spend month, so I am doing it this month! 🙂
Yay, have fun with it!
I have to stand in the column for a high-spend March, as it was my big 5-0 birthday for which I hosted two parties, went out to eat at a fancy restaurant, and my son came for a surprise visit from overseas and we treated him to some local restaurants he wanted to visit. I also treated myself to a massage, ahh.
That said, the parties were held at home and featured home-made food (apart from bakery cakes for the first party), borrowed decorations, and alcohol bought at a dollar-over sale.
The restaurants we visit are local businesses we want to support rather than national chains. I have stopped shopping at Amazon/Target since January.
For clothes, March was a month when I emptied closets and took anything “nicer” to a consignment shop to sell without falling into temptation to buy anything while there.
I bough new shoes, socks and underwear for my son. I also bought fabric on discount from Joann’s going out of business.
Another item in the big spend category is trips to go see family. We purchased airline tickets and lodging for the summer, but that is the life of a family split between two continents (my family all live overseas).
Overall, March was a month of mindful spending, and some big spends thanks to living frugally at other times.
You are living your best life and I applaud your joyful spending, happy birthday!!!
Thank you, Katy! 🙂
I did not buy anything at all from the big box stores I wanted to avoid – Walmart, Target, and Amazon. Otherwise, though, March was an unfortunately spendy month, which I knew going it because I had several necessary expenses due to moving. Still, I managed to find a lot of good deals on what I needed without relying on the supposedly cheaper stores, so I think I did pretty well.
I was planning a low-spend month for April, but it has not started out well. I got sick with a bad cold yesterday and had to buy some things, spending more than I normally would on my grocery shopping. Oh, well, I’ll try again when I can.
Well done on staying away from the big three! Sorry about your cold.
My goal was to avoid box/chain stores and shop local more. I did pop into Dollar general (meh) a couple times when it was the closest option (12 miles closer). Our groceries came primarily from Aldis. A couple fill I trips to the local grocery chain when they were near other errands. I really don’t shop.online, so that wasn’t a game changer. I have noticed an uptick in ebay sales, yippee!
The challenge was more about increasing my self awareness and being a little more attuned to shoping my values regarding small purchases.
Eagerly awaiting garden season and fresh veg 🙂
I will be practicing shopping awareness for April as well.
My eBay has been absolutely dead, then again it’s been months and months since I’ve listed anything new.
Your no-spend March was impressively done! I know that is extra tough when you are hosting people at your house. In other news, I’m pretty excited over here because I just read in the news that we are getting our first-ever WINCO grocery store out here in the Denver area!! It’s not close to my house, but I definitely want to go check it out once they open. Hoping if they do well that they will build some more stores in our area. We don’t really have discount grocery stores here (still hoping Aldi will make its way out here someday!).
Ooh, that’s great, their new stores are especially good!
My month was pretty good. No Amazon, Target or Walmart. I had to buy underwear for my son, so I got it on eBay (new, not used!). Not really sure about some of those big eBay sellers, how they get their stuff, etc. Will need to investigate. I sold my 15-year-old minivan and I am kind of liking us being a one-car family, for the moment. I would have kept the van but it needed all new doors. One of the doors would literally fall off if you tried to open it. Not resorting to takeout continues to be a struggle, but we try to stick to locally owned places if we do get it. I do ShopRite, Acme and Sprouts for groceries. Would love to have something employee owned here someday — or a food co-op. From time to time we hear talk about that.
I also bought something on eBay after my Amazon boycot. Imagine my surprise when the item arrived in a Prime envelope (and no, not one of those reused ones either)!
Urgh! Mine hasn’t come yet so we’ll see!
Excellent!
I’m impressed with your food spending!
In March, we reduced spending in two big categories: Groceries and Meals Out. We spent $400 on groceries during March vs. the $525 monthly average over the previous year. We spent $113 on meals out vs. the $225 monthly average over the previous year. I expect those trends to continue as we shift more of our grocery shopping to Aldi and cut back on dining out by meeting friends for walks or coffee instead and not going out to eat together as often.
In March, we had a big bill for half of our Airbnb rental fee for next winter’s trip and for ongoing expenses for the money pit that is our house.
I knew at the beginning of March I couldn’t do a no/low spend month for groceries. Our family has several severe food allergies and The Only Pasta one of my kids can eat is made in Canada. Although the supply doesn’t appear to have been interrupted yet, I decided to stock up on that, some other products made in Canada, and all the GF flours we use. (All our flours are Bob’s Red Mill, which is in Oregon. I emailed them and got a great response about where they source the grains for the flours we buy.) So… lots of money toward the pantry. We seldom eat out, but have been dealing with a frustrating and time consuming health issue for a family member. That resulted in a few restaurant meals. I also purchased a couple of clothing items from a company I love. They had a 30% off sale. Because I hate shopping, I have a lot of threadbare clothes, so I felt ok about these purchases. April should give me more opportunities to save on groceries and meals out. And once the snow melts, I’ll be able to plant some veggie seeds in the garden.
On the plus side, I had no problem not giving my money to Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc (see “I hate shopping”). Looking for an alternative for the last two things I buy from Whole Foods as well as a different lotion w/ sunscreen. I finally looked at the label and the one my dermatologist recommends is a Proctor & Gamble product. Can I just say I LOVE the challenge of finding local businesses to support?