Are you ready for a no-spend challenge in 2025?

With all the expenses of Christmas, many of us are really feeling the pinch. And January always feels like a very long month before the next payday.

If your finances are stretched, you may be considering taking out a small personal loan to help tide you over. And whilst this may be a short term solution, it’s also important to find other ways to get your finances back on track as soon as possible.

So why not plan one or more no-spend challenges for 2025? In this article we explain what a no-spend challenge is, list the advantages of a no-spend challenge, and give you a few ideas for no-spend challenges that might work for you and your family.

What is a no-spend challenge?

As the name suggests, a no-spend challenge is when you stop spending money. The concept of a no-spend challenge went viral at the beginning of 2024, thanks to TikTok and No Spend January. But as we shall see later in this article, the idea of a no-spend challenge has been around for many years.

No-spend challenges come in many shapes and sizes, and ultimately the choice of what you stop spending money on and how long for is totally up to you.

We will look at some examples later in this article but the aim is to choose at least one item or category of items that you will not buy for a certain period of time, perhaps a week or a month.

What are the advantages of a no-spend challenge?

The main advantage of a no-spend challenge is that it can enable you to get your finances back on track after a period of overspending such as Christmas. If you can be disciplined for a relatively short period of time and avoid spending money on some of the things that you usually do, you will soon start to notice the difference. And if you keep going, you may even be able to open a savings account and start to save money towards a particular goal in the future such as a car, holiday or deposit for a home.

But there are also some other advantages that people have discovered when doing a no-spend challenge. Three of these are:

• A no-spend challenge can help you to review your spending habits. For example, if you regularly overspend on a particular thing but have found during the no-spend challenge that it’s not a major problem to cut back, then that might be something that you decide to carry forward.
• A no-spend challenge can help you to be more creative about finding ways to entertain yourself without spending too much money in the process. For example going to free events such as free movie screenings (check out Eventbrite), local music evenings, museums and art galleries. Or meeting up with friends for a walk or entertaining them at home. You can save money and still have fun!
• A no-spend challenge can also bring a sense of calm and give you the opportunity to reflect on your lifestyle. If you are always out and about spending money, perhaps consider spending more time at home and taking up one or two hobbies that you’ve always wanted to do. Whether it’s learning a musical instrument or another language, getting into cookery or art, or just having time to sort out your home, there is plenty to do that does not involve spending money.

What are some examples of a no-spend challenge?

The beauty of a no-spend challenge is that it can be whatever works for you. At one extreme is that way back in 2006 a group of friends in San Francisco – calling themselves The Compact after the Mayflower pilgrims – decided to try living for a year without spending money on anything other than essentials i.e. accommodation, transport, bills, food and drink, toiletries, medicine and underwear. Anything else they needed had to be sourced without spending any money on it.

After living the no-spend life for twelve months, many of the group felt so liberated by it that they continued the way of life for much longer. And they also set up an online group to swap goods and tips which was rapidly joined by around 3,000 other people. One of the group, John Perry, explained that it made him much more “aware of the excesses of consumer culture and the fact we are drawing down our resources and making people miserable around the world.”

For most people, a no-spend challenge is more likely to be less ambitious : perhaps a week or a month just eliminating one particular category of expenditure. But you can adapt your no-spend challenge however you want, to make it work for you. You may even just want to start with one day a week for a few weeks then build up to a longer period when you feel you are ready to do so.

Examples of no-spend challenges that others have tried are:

• Clothes;
• Shoes;
• Beauty / grooming products;
• Salon appointments;
• Eating out;
• Pub drinks;
• Takeaway coffees or meals;
• Newspapers or magazines;
• Streaming services.

For more ideas try checking out the hashtag #nospendchallenge on social media.

And to make sure your no-spend challenge is worth it, be very careful not to fall into the trap of what is known as “revenge spending”. This is when your no-spend challenge ends and you start buying all the things that you have not been spending money on. To avoid this risk, it’s better to start small with a no-spend challenge, and just cut out spending one or two things for a short period of time until you get into the no-spend groove.

We hope that this article has given you some ideas and inspiration about how to save money during 2025 by doing a no-spend challenge.

For more money saving tips, check back here soon with us at Loans 2 Go.