Saturday, October 3, 2015

Low Buy, No Buy Starting Points

Some of the advice I've read is to stock up before you start. So bad! This causes me to waaaay over spend and over need to no buy. It also opens up the "gimmie now" monster to all the new things you might be missing. If you're browsing stores opens your eyes to things you never knew you could want (or perhaps had forgotten about). For me, even going to a consignment shop to drop off excess or listing things online can catch my eye.

What has worked?
1. Keeping busy. Try to distract yourself.
2. Inventory all your stuff. Holy crap batman! I never knew I was so lucky.
3. Think about how long those items are actually going to last. I've been rambling about make-up on the blog for a while so let's use an eyeshadow as an example. It takes me 1-2 weeks to use up a sample baggie, full sizes are so much larger! It frightens me that I may have committed to this makeup for the rest. of. my. life (if I chose to use it all up before buying something new). If I buy another 1, 2 or 15... that's almost another year!
4. Budget, or more recording each item I buy. September was just a month to try to be frugal (knowing I had some stress triggers and I didn't want to make it worse by restricting myself to a breaking point).
5. A goal. You need a reason to change. If you have decided to no buy or low buy, you (or someone else or your credit cards) has said "Enough! This is not working.". Without a good motivational thought it's going to be very easy to fall back into older patterns.
6. Positivity!



For a personal touch here's my September story: I can haul like oates when I want. I had an upcoming birthday and a situation which leads to stress shopping. Even with my goal of being frugal, sticking to my debt repayment plan and getting my life back the way I want I apparently think spoiling myself is more important. I'm disappointed with myself, my hoarding, and my lack of discipline. But I need to be kind. Move on. Refocus.

I'm going to do a very long shopping ban as I want to start panning items, and overall continue getting the amount stuff in my house lower. I need to evaluate which subscriptions I will keep (because goodness, I love them! and I think they do help keep me from shopping and I love the satisfaction of using up a mini product). I think I'll keep the yearly (Topbox, BirchBox and Ipsy) and sadly drop the indies (Hello Waffle, Innocent and Twisted, Food boxes) to streamline my budgeting.

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