It’s been quite a while since I did a ‘no buy’ or ‘low buy’ month with purpose. The last time I wrote about it on the blog was 2018, where I also popped off a bit about the idea that my husband is the boss of me and our money (I actually still very much enjoy this blog post, so here it is: How Much My Husband Allows Me To Spend on Clothing & No Buy July).
Anywho. This time we are doing a “Low Buy July” as a family for a few reasons. First of all, my husband’s job has been impacted by the Port of Baltimore tragedy, so there have been weeks with very low work as the supply chain is switching back from the Norfolk port to the Baltimore port. Since we are a two-income household, this means that we need to tighten up our spending. The second big impact is that our son broke his arm a couple weeks ago and the emergency room/emergency surgery bills are around the bend.
Not that you need a stampede of bills coming in order to decide to cut back a bit. And I do realize how extremely fortunate we are when many (if not all) families are struggling with the rising cost of everything right now.
If you also want to participate in a Low Buy July, please feel free to join in with me.
I was going to write out my list of rules here, but honestly everyone’s rules will be different. While we are not going on a full spending freeze, we are taking a closer look at wants and needs throughout the month.
Also, we each have our own trigger stores that we are planning to avoid. For me, it’s TJ Maxx/Marshalls/Homegoods. For my husband it’s Walmart and Home Depot. And for Jack, it’s Target. These stores just suck the money right out of our wallets, so we figure it’s just easier to avoid them all together as much as possible. Thrifting is still allowed for my mental sanity. Because I’m not really spending a bunch of money there anyways.
We are all also going to try to just use what we have before getting any new stuff. This includes beauty products/toiletries/etc when they run out, food in the fridge/freezer/pantry, and of course restyling clothing we already own (okay, this one’s just for me) rather than hitting up the Anthropologie ‘sale on sale’ they have each summer. Any ‘wants’ will be added into my Notes app to look at in August and we will see then if we still want each item, or if the desire has passed. I also already went ahead and paused a couple of our non-essential subscriptions.
So yeah, we aren’t going into full money lockdown mode, but more of a bit of a palate cleanser for the month. And hopefully, as those hospital bills trickle in we can get them paid off ASAP… and look forward to our next vacation!