There are many reasons that the year-end holiday could have taken its toll on your wallet. Christmas gifts are pricey; petrol on staycations and air tickets for overseas trips add up; and then there are the cocktail hour, eating out and shopping sprees inherent in a happy holiday, which you probably wouldn’t do regularly under normal circumstances. So: how can you curb your spending during the latter part of January to make up for this? My advice: simply… don’t… spend (at all!)
My rule for 2020, when it comes to buying clothes, is one item in, and five go out (to charity, a second-hand shop, a clothing swop etc). I’m also trying to be more eco-conscious, so more cycling, less petrol can also add to your no-spend (transport) efforts.
Once again this year, in my attempts to tackle a No-Buy-January, I realised how much stuff I actually have stored. Food, tinned and frozen, that just piles up… So the rule in this month of not buying anything unnecessary for your immediate survival (which excludes fresh fruit and veg, of course), is that you’ve got to use what you’ve have stored in the cupboard first.
Last year this time, I literally cleared out my kitchen, bathroom and bedroom cupboards. And what I realised is that I was previously buying things right, left and centre. I always love a lipstick; I adore new gym clothes, as just two examples. Because of this, I’ve got plenty of unwanted, unneeded stuff accumulating in my home.
So: how will you tackle and survive – or what are you likely to learn about yourself – during the course of No-Buy-January? If you’re an entrepreneur who usually works at a coffee shop, where you spend on average R30 on a coffee and R100 on a meal, it could help to just have the coffee when you need the break from home (a R100 saving per day!). Or: you could opt to meet up with another entrepreneur or small business owner at their home or yours, and take it in turns to make the coffee while you plough through each of your laptop work.
If you have a function to attend, such as the L’Ormarins Queens Plate Racing Festival, as I did on Saturday, 11 January, and your dress, hair, make-up and nails are sorted, what about borrowing the shoes and/or bag you need from a good friend/your sister etc. [Instagram link: https://www.instagram.com/p/B7La_tvh3OK/]
