do a no buy year

Action

Buy only strict necessities. Either do without or figure out non-financial means of acquiring things (goods, experiences) that you used to use money to get.

Typically, a No Buy Year (NBY) means only spending money on the following:

• Rent/mortgage
• Car payments
• Fuel
• Public transportation tickets
• Necessary repairs to car, bicycle, etc
• Groceries (not restaurants)
• Cell phone/internet plan (although if internet isn’t required for work, consider canceling this)
• Soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, etc

Most excluded categories of spending should be obvious: no buying new outfits, no avocado toast, no buying new video games, etc. Here are a few potentially non-obvious things to not spend money on in a NBY:

• Clothes.
• Alcohol.
• All entertainment subscriptions (cancel Netflix, Spotify, magazines, Substacks, Patreons, etc).

Discussion

The point of the NBY isn’t to do without and sacrifice. The point of the NBY is to learn that money isn’t the only way to solve your problems, that money isn’t the only method for arranging your life in a good way.

• The first several months tend to be difficult and feel like a sacrifice.
• Then it starts to feel normal.
• Then you start to find creative ways to find things to do with your life that don’t involve spending money.
• One day you realize that you no longer automatically assume that money is THE tool for securing a good life, and the fact that you used to think money was the ONLY tool for securing a good life comes as a bit of a shocking revelation to you.

You find money terribly convenient for securing the basic necessities of life – basic shelter, safe and delicious food, tools and gear, dependable transportation systems – but you no longer assume that quality of life is linearly proportional to the amount of money you spend. You come to know at an experiential level that just enough (money) is plenty.

The purpose of the NBY is to change how you think.

The NBY is the canonical crowbar move.