7 Things I Stopped Buying And Started Saving
By: Sharone T James
Tags: Minimalism, Money, Lifestyle, Self, Planning

Sale Items

When it comes to sales — when you’re buying items, you want to be very, very careful of this, because I find that a lot of my friends — for example, will end up spending $1000 on a shopping trip and they’ll say that, “it actually is worth $1500 and they saved $500 because of the sale and it was 50% off and they got a great deal of just $1000”.

But then my thought process is more so — you didn’t save $500, you spent $1000 and you have that much amount less in your bank today than you had yesterday and is the absolute truth.

That’s really how I view it — and you want to just think about this going forward, that’s just because something’s on sale doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to save money on this item.

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I try my best to not be affected by sales. When I am in need of something — I’ll just go out and buy that thing. I never try to get much affected by sales and discounts.

So there are obviously times where sales can make sense, where it’s coming up on winter and their summer items that are on sale or vice versa. If it’s winter and you want to buy summer items — that could just make more sense and you could save more money.

But we’re talking about the 70 percent off carpet blowout sale or the mattress blowout sale — the ones that happen all the time and the same go for cars as well.

It’s really kind of my idea is that you’re going to pay the market price for most items. So I just don’t bother trying to get as many sales as some other people might do. And this actually goes for couponing as well. I’ve seen people use coupons and they end up spending twice or thrice as much money as somebody who doesn’t use coupons because they’re buying items that they just have no need for — they think that it is essential to buy three of four to get one free and they end up spending more money, which is stupid.

So just keep that in mind as you go forward with buying items in the future in the psychology of purchasing things and how that really affects you.

Beverage Drinks

Another thing that I stopped buying almost altogether is any type of drinks, whether it be sugary drinks, even a lot of alcohol I don’t really buy as it just kills brain cells. But the average American consumes over forty-four gallons of soda per year and that explains a lot of the health problems that we have in America.

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But it’s really not only a financial expense — it’s going to cost you a lot of money buying sugary drinks, buying soda, fruit juice in a lot of cases, and bottled water. I just drink tap water. I filter it through a filter. You can even get a more fancy filter, if you like, for thirty dollars and you’re good for quite some time by just drinking water. I don’t really need anything else and this isn’t really actually for real financial reasons.

It’s more so just because most drinks and fluids that you put in your body that aren’t water, they’re not going to be very healthy for you. And in a lot of cases, they are loaded with sugar and it’s just not good for you. This saved me a lot of money and it is also a very healthy option to opt-out of these things.

Unnecessary Food

Something else that I stopped doing is actually overbuying food. So this is an interesting topic because people tend to spend huge racks of money on food. It’s important to make your own food instead of going out to restaurants to eat. But at the same time, you want to be careful that you’re not spending too much money on food. This is actually a problem for many people.

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Some people will buy eggs, or they’ll buy too much meat and then they won’t use it or they forget to freeze it. It’s sitting there in the fridge for a couple of weeks and then it goes bad.

There must be a balance between buying in bulk to save money and at the same time not buying too much bulk when the food will go to waste and you have to throw them out in the trash.

It creates a lot of waste financially and also for the environment, sustainability in general — it’s just not very good to do.

Buying a Car

Now, the next one here, I know people are going to disagree with this, and it’s not something that really works for everybody, but it’s something that I’ve been able to do and that’s by actually cutting down transportation costs quite a bit, by not having a car.

I never thought this was possible at some time because there’s always been a car with me — but it works for me.

I’m 25, so I don’t have kids to take care of, I don’t have to drive an hour to work and I live in a relatively urban area. So if you look at the most expensive things in our lives — it’s housing, then it’s transportation cost, which is about $8000 per year, then it’s food costs.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

If you are trying hard to cut that —find a way to not own a car. Like I mentioned, I didn’t think it was possible because I thought, — “ what about that one time that I have to drive to the airport or I have to drive an hour to go to a doctor’s appointment or somewhere in a different state for some weird reason ”. And I found that I just actually just don’t really need one.

I take Ubers from time to time, but even with that, I might spend $50 a month on Uber for the random trips where I need a car and it’s still saving me a lot of money because when you have a car, you’re not just paying for that car payment, but you’re paying for insurance, which could be a thousand dollars per year, you’re paying for wear and tear, you’re paying for maintenance. There are so many costs that add up to become a massive amount.

As I said, it’s over eight thousand dollars per year in transportation that we pay — whereas I personally probably pay a little bit over one hundred dollars per month in all of my transportation costs. It frees up so much cash in my personal budget for myself. So just explore a little bit and see if it’s possible. I know it’s not possible for most people, but for those people out there who might not need a car.

Hotels

Now, this is a personal preference, but I found that most American families, they might go on vacation and spend three thousand dollars on a week-long trip to the Bahamas, maybe Cancun, Aruba, and they go on these vacations at all-inclusive resorts where they’re paying four hundred dollars a night for a hotel room.

That’s not really my cup of tea. What I found and this is kind of actually really by accident is when I started traveling, I found that I could stretch, say, three thousand dollars for months traveling by being kind of savvy about how you do it — whether it comes to buying plane tickets, being smart about where you’re traveling to and hotels. I don’t stay in hotels. Airbnb is generally cheaper. You can stay with friends as well.

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Just make friends around the world. It’s a lot easier than what I thought it would be — but also staying in hostels. Now, this isn’t for everybody like I mentioned earlier that some of these things are very much personal choices. But I ended up staying in hostels when I travel, especially when I’m solo traveling — going to Japan for a couple of weeks, I don’t know where I’m staying. I’ll probably stay in a hostel because then I can meet other people, explore the city with other people instead of by myself.

And it’s like $20 a night — it just works out. It’s a win-win all around the board when it comes to traveling and staying in places that are not $400 a night, hotels where you’re not meeting people, you’re not experiencing the culture, you’re just kind of cooped up in a hotel or resort.

So even I’ll go as far as to say that if I had tens of millions of dollars in the future, I’d probably still stay in hostels because I think that they’re fun.

You meet a lot of new people and I just think it’s a great experience. And I’ve met so many new people and find myself in just places that I would never otherwise have done if I hadn’t stayed in hostels and met new people. So if you’re young — you’re in your 20s or 30s, I would just consider doing it now. I can’t condone couch surfing. I don’t want people to die or get killed. And I probably shouldn’t condone hitchhiking as well.

But those are some real ways to kind of have some cool life experiences.