Save money with a targeted no-spend month

We all have spending habits. Some spending habits are more expensive than others, but we have habits nonetheless.

The spending habits we have are often the result of guilty pleasure (choose your favorite; I certainly won't judge). They can also be related to hobbies, like music.

If you're looking to save money, though, those spending habits deserve some looking-over, for the very reason that you're spending without giving it a whole lot of thought.

Challenge: Can you have a no-spend month on your favorite habit?

Bridget from Money After Graduation is considering a hiatus from one of her spending habits. She just tweeted:

“I wonder if I can go a month without downloading anything from iTunes…”

(If she only downloads free stuff, then let's pretend for the duration of this post that the stuff she downloads costs money.)

This is great to try. Having a no-spend month with just one thing by itself isn't drastic, but the fact that it's a favorite habit means that it will be missed, at least for a little while.  A few things can come out of this:

1. She doesn't make it the month. Not the end of the world. I don't know how many times I've tried to break a habit and haven't won. Maybe next time.
2. She does make it the month, but goes back to downloading music. Perhaps now she has a “less automatic” perspective on downloading, and thinks a little more before downloading, which is a good thing.
3. She makes it to the end of the month, and decides that music really wasn't that important anyway. Maybe she has more music than she knows what to do with already.  She enjoys what she has, which is a good thing, too!

In any case, going through the exercise is beneficial.

Have you sworn off buying something for a month (or more)? How did your no-spend month go?