Buy Nothing Month Results

My goal for the month of August was to spend as lit­tle as human­ly pos­si­ble on non-nec­es­sary items, and cut down on my nor­mal month spend­ing. How’d I do!?

I did GREAT! I’m not say­ing there isn’t room for improve­ment, because there is, but over­all I’m thrilled with the results of my challenge.

 

Check it out! I spent $1000 less than I did the pre­vi­ous month, and I halved my spend­ing from May! (to be fair, I moved in May and had a lot of mov­ing relat­ed expens­es that I was lat­er reim­bursed for). See­ing that graph con­tin­ue to go down is very grat­i­fy­ing to me, and pro­vides moti­va­tion for me to keep up the good work.

I’m glad I was doing the buy noth­ing month. I had a few things pop up that I need­ed to address, like an oil change, fees for var­i­ous activ­i­ties, and costs asso­ci­at­ed with med­ical costs for me and the cat. All told, I spent just shy of $400 on my non-fixed costs. If I had been spend­ing like I did in the pre­vi­ous months, I would’ve been over bud­get instead of under budget.

Ana­lyz­ing my spend­ing has helped me real­ize my pri­or­i­ties. I’ve dis­cov­ered I’m not much for pur­chas­ing stuff. The occa­sion­al book or video game non­with­stand­ing, most of the mon­ey I spend is doing some­thing with peo­ple. Whether that be pay­ing to join a soc­cer or soft­ball league, pay­ing year­ly dues to the local quilt guild, with­draw­ing cash to spend at the fair or hav­ing a night out on the town, I’ll hap­pi­ly pay it. Stuff like that gets me out of my com­fort zone and inter­act­ing with new peo­ple. Nights like that form mem­o­ries I’ll trea­sure more than hav­ing a Blu-Ray set of the newest Mar­vel Movies.

The future is murky for me. I’m guar­an­teed a job until Decem­ber 2016 at my cur­rent com­pa­ny. I have no idea what I’ll do after that. I do love work­ing for my employ­er, but they’re not exact­ly locat­ed in the best cities for young, sin­gle women. If I could find a posi­tion that had at least equal pay in a bet­ter loca­tion (or even bet­ter, a remote posi­tion that would allow me to live wher­ev­er I want­ed!!), I’d prob­a­bly take it.

Of course, who knows. I could find the man of my dreams and set­tle here and nev­er leave. In which case, we’d com­bine house­holds, so the less extra stuff I have hang­ing around the better!

Back to the spend­ing chal­lenge though. My fixed expens­es stayed rel­a­tive­ly the same. Mon­ey spent on food went down, util­i­ties went down slight­ly, and inter­net switched to being paid on the first, so it was­n’t account­ed for in August. I’m hap­py food went down. It’s been an area I’ve strug­gled, although… since I start­ed real­ly track­ing that cat­e­go­ry, I’ve cut it down by almost $200, so that’s a huge win in my book.

So, dear Read­ers, I chal­lenge you to do a Buy Noth­ing Month. Who knows what you’ll dis­cov­er about your­self when you do!