I forgot to update today in the live but last week I was working through some items in my basement and made a plan to post them on fb marketplace. By the time I started thinking through the amount of money I would get (if people paid what I was asking) it was roughly $60 and I just decided to drop them off for donation. I really didn’t want to take pictures, measure everything, chat back and forth with people and arrange pickup times. Definitely a huge privilege to be able to “leave money on the table” but also felt awesome to just be rid of a BIG pile that had been stressing me out and not drag it out anymore.

Today was my daughter's birthday party. I don't know who decided every party needed party favors but I have always hated receiving them and putting them together. They seem to always just end up as clutter or easily breakable and thrown away. So I changed my perspective in light of my low buy year. I bought food safe bags and preloaded them with a napkin and a hot cocoa mix. At the party once things were winding down I added the leftover donuts to each bag for kids to take home. They were cute, easy and each kid was excited about having donuts for the ride home. Also helped with not having an excessive amount of leftovers. Many parents thanked me for having a consumable item as they were leaving. I'm only seeing a win win win situation here.

So I embarked on my no-buy year last January, and I knew I would be saving money from the "Shopping" category of my budget. The stuff, right? That was obvious. (And I did! I decreased spending there by 95% and saved over $9k from previous years spending). But interestingly, we ended up saving a LOT more money on other stuff last year, too. Our overall spending was down by $20k+. When I did a deep dive to find out why, I realized a that the no buy gave me a lot more time / more mental bandwidth. With this increase in time and bandwidth, I was able to significantly save money in other categories. For example, we saved a few thousand by mowing our own lawn this year, because we had time to spend an hour on a Saturday doing yard work as a family. Same with cleaning service (we cut them mid-year). We ate out WAY less. I cancelled an unnecessary fitness expense (Peloton... we bought a bike back when I was really into high intensity cardio, but the last few years I've been doing more steady state cardio and one short HIIT session weekly, so I didn't need to pay $50 a month for the membership! I just ride our bike while listening to an audiobook or watching a show). Overall, unexpected and wasn't an intended result of my no buy year, but it feels really freeing to see how happy we are with spending so much less money than years past! :) Sorry that got long. Ha