Welcome to my no-buy year! This new adventure that I am embarking on is one of the most daunting challenges I have ever put in front of myself – an entire year of “no-buy”.
What does that mean exactly? Well, for me it means a year of buying no new makeup, skin care, clothing, housewares, books or magazines. Generally, I’m not buying any fun stuff for a whole year. The exception is a replacement product once I have used up all items in that category (i.e. replacing a hydrating night cream and I have no other product in my collection that I can use up to serve as an ultra hydrating night cream) or if that product has expired (i.e. mascara).
“Why would anyone set down such austere rules for themselves for an entire year”, you may be asking yourself. Well, I prefer to call them my “parameters”, as “rules” tend to send me into a spin of rebellious behaviors (“So I can’t have carbs? Hello fettuccini alfredo!”)
The reasons I have chosen to embark on this new journey of a whole no-spending year is multi-faceted and I will be exploring those reasons in this blog. The psychological effects of spending money, shopping addiction (or maybe just “shopping abuse”), what I’m avoiding, what I’m really craving, along with whatever else I learn about myself is what I plan blog about this over the next year. I’m also documenting this process on my YouTube channel.
Let’s just start with what sparked this year-long project. I found myself getting into a bunch of new beauty influencer channels on YouTube the second half of 2022, one of them being Hannah Louise Poston. I find her style calming, grounded, budget focused not to mention that she’s got major cool-girl vibes. Ok, maybe I have a slight girl-crush on her, but you would too if you got to know her like I have. Several times I heard her mention her previous no-buy year (which is how she started her channel) and I got curious. I started watching some of her first videos along with ones she made after her no-buy year talking about what she learned about herself. I was intrigued.
I knew I’d been spending way too much money over the 2nd half of the year, and I was beginning to feel a bit out of control. It’s not like I haven’t had periods of time in my life where I was on a no-buy, however these were purposefully practiced. They were out of sheer necessity. I distinctly remember the lean years circa 2011-2013 when the world was climbing out of the Great Recession, I had recently graduated college (end of 2010), there were no jobs to be found in the industry I studied for in the area where I lived and now I was having to pay back a huge student loan debt, prices overall had increased (sound familiar?) and the business I own with my husband was making significantly less money than previous years.
Standing in my bathroom I remember trying to squeeze the last drops of my body lotion out of the bottle and wondering “do I have enough money to buy a replacement at Target today?” Those were some scary times where I actually wondered if we could be facing bankruptcy.
There was also the time exactly three years ago when I had left my full-time job to freelance and spend time helping my husband grown a second business he started. No sooner had I left my job when all the freelance work, which had been rolling in on a consistent basis, just totally dried up. I had already booked a trip to Bogota, Colombia to attend a Dr. Joe Dispenza 3-day progressive workshop. It was a magical weekend but stepping off the plane when we landed home, I was facing the fact that between our checking and savings account, we had around $5. I am no stranger to having to a face an extended period of “no-buy”.
But this time is different. This is something I’m approaching mindfully and intentionally. This is a self-imposed reset into my spending habits, relationship to money and understanding the energy surrounding it.
This is my No-Buy Year and I look forward to sharing my journey with you!
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