I am 2 months in to my low buy year and I am doing just okay. I am not doing as awful as previous years, but I am still buying unnecessary things unfortunately. I would give myself a C for now.
One good thing though is that I have cut back on buying things for my business. Last year I spent close to $4,000 on supplies like fragrance oils, mica, clays etc. A lot of it wasn’t even necessary. I bought so many ingredients that I can’t even remember what they were for and they have just been on my shelf all this time.
I have only bought myself one clothing item and it was a tshirt that I bought for the Knott’s Berry Farm Peanuts Celebration. I have bought my daughter 3 shirts, which isn’t too bad. I think I should definitely be able to get through March without buying her anymore clothes or myself. Though I might us shirts for Knott’s Berry Farm Boysenberry Festival, if they are cute.
I have done a good job of not buying soap or whipped soap. Last year I bought way too much and ended up giving away so much of it to my local Buy Nothing group.
I have also bought some books from the library. I think I have spent about $20 total, which isn’t much, but each book was 25 to 50 cents, so I ended up buying a lot of books. To be honest, i don’t have much space for them, but I couldn’t pass up the good deals and had to add them to my collection of books. I think I have somewhere between 600-800 books from my childhood collection.
Next month I will try to be more intentional with my purchases. Target and Amazon are two places where I have spent too much money, so my goal is to cut back on shopping there.