Mrs Hawkins Newsletter 15-09-2026-No Spend September

It’s beginning to feel a lot like autumn..

Hi everyone,

I hope your September is going well and that everyone has made it safely back to school, university, crèche, playschool and everywhere else they need to be.

What have I been doing?

We are getting two of the big kids ready to leave for university.

As soon as you think you have everything sorted, another item appears on the list:

• A potato masher
• An extension lead
• A clothes steamer

Anyway, we are almost there. The front hall is piled high with boxes ready to be shipped out at the weekend. Isn’t it so exciting? Oh, to be 18 again and heading off….

We are also preparing for our late summer holiday.

We have been invited to a wedding abroad. I have been unwell for quite a long time and, apart from driving to Ireland with the hubby, we haven’t had a proper holiday for a over two years.

I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ll share a few pictures on Instagram Stories.

The freezer inventory

Whenever I do a no-spend challenge, I tend to give my freezer a good tidy and clear-out.

After finally completing my freezer inventory, I realised that I use my freezer in ways that sometimes surprise people. Any time I mention freezing food in glass jars, I receive several messages from people cringing at the thought!

I’ve gathered all the useful and occasionally unusual ways I use my freezer to save money into one blog post.

How to Use Your Freezer to Save Money: 14 Things You Probably Don’t Know!

No Spend September: the midway mark

I have dragged my carcass through No Spend September, that’s the God’s honest truth.

On reflection, the month when two kids move out to university and we prepare for our first proper holiday in two years was probably not the best month to choose for a no-spend challenge.

However, we knew September would be expensive. We planned for it and had most of the money saved well in advance.

It has been such a busy month that I’ve needed to regroup quite stringently each week. To prepare for the final stretch, I sat down this morning with a cup of tea and a pile of receipts and worked through the following list:

• Checked the balance in each budget category, account and cash envelope.
• Completed a full bills check. I still pay many of mine manually because I’m not a fan of direct debits.
• Forecast our spending for the next month and a half so that we return from our holiday to calm finances.
• Closed off the university preparation lists and budgets.
• Completed our final grocery list and meal plan for September.

Whatever your September has looked like for you, this is a useful time of year to review your budget and look ahead.

With winter approaching, you may want to:

• Consider upcoming heating costs ( look at last years bill and add a bit 😣)
• Make sure the cars are ready for winter.
• Write out your Christmas budget and begin funding it.
• Check whether you need any practical winter items, such as warm bedding, blankets or shoes.

I hate to be the one to say it, but winter is around the corner and it is a long one for us in the UK and in Ireland.

Oh, hey! I have left the comments open below if you want to say hi. If you are not from the UK or from Ireland, where are you from and what are your winters like?

Review your No Spend rules

If you are doing a spending challenge this September, take another look at the rules you set at the beginning of the month.

( If you’re not doing a no spend but you’d like to know a bit more about the challenge, this is for you too!)

Go here to read this post if you need a bit of inspiration..

And then come back here and ask yourself:

• What did I want to achieve?
• Where has my spending increased?
• Which part of the challenge has been difficult?
• Do any of my rules need to be clearer?
• What one behaviour will I focus on this week?

For me, it is top-up shopping. I’m working on it, but I think it’ll take October to help me fully get back on track with shopping more intentionally. We are planning to start using a cash n carry in October too.

I’ll fill you in on Insta when we start doing that.

Bye for now

Thanks for reading. Speak to you next week.

Ruth xx
Mrs Hawkins House

P.S. If you want to start budgeting…

Firstly, go here on my website to grab some free printables including the free printable budget planner. If you want to use them digitally you can too (on Good Notes or other annotation apps that support PDF)

And then, look at your grocery spending, and also at your food waste!

The grocery budget is a very helpful place to begin if you want to learn how to budget. It is one contained area that you can focus on, and you can often see the results quite quickly.

That is where I started when I paid off my debt during my no-spend year.

Waste Less, Spend Less is the system I created to help you reset your kitchen, reduce your grocery spending and reduce food waste. I found that being relentless about food waste was the key to making meaningful savings in the kitchen (I paid off quarter of my debt doing this)

The system includes:

• A practical eBook and workbook
• A grocery spreadsheet
• A bonus ChatGPT prompt to help you create meal plans using the food that needs using first

You can use the prompt with the free version of ChatGPT.

Buy It Here

Use the code NEWSLETTER SPECIAL for 15% off today.