2987: My Buy Nothing Year: How I Bought NO Clothing for a Year & 5 Things I Learned by Kyle Kowalski of Sloww

[00:00:00] It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily Episode 2987, My Buy Nothing Year, How I Bought No Clothing for a Year and 5 Things I Learned by Kyle Kowalski of Slow.co, and I'm your narrator Justin Malik reading you articles every single day of the year,

[00:00:16] usually covering minimalism on Mondays. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life. My Buy Nothing Year, How I Bought No Clothing for a Year and 5 Things I Learned by Kyle Kowalski of Slow.co, Quote,

[00:00:37] Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have. Doris Mormon So it turns out I just completed a Buy Nothing Year with clothing, including shoes, accessories, everything. After taking a look at our recent monthly expenses, I realized that I've now spent

[00:00:56] $0 on clothing in 19 of the last 23 months as well as completed a consecutive year of no clothing spending. How is this possible? An overview of my Buy Nothing Year also called No Buy Year, No Spend Challenge, No Shopping Year or Shopping Ban.

[00:01:14] In my previous post, I referred to this as Oops Minimalism because I didn't intentionally set out to not buy anything. It just naturally happened as I've downshifted to slow living and voluntary simplicity. In 2017, clothing was our household's fifth highest spending category after home, taxes, food and cars.

[00:01:36] Clothing costs us more than other categories like our dogs, entertainment, side business expenses, utilities, phone and internet, health related expenses and other hobbies. I'm also highly attuned to clothing because I spent the last four years working in the apparel industry before leaving my job in May.

[00:01:55] So this seemed like a natural category to cut back spending in 2018. I just didn't realize I would cut all the way back. When I really think about it, here's my number one takeaway if you want to be successful in a challenge like this.

[00:02:08] The only way to truly commit to a year of no spending is to need something even more than you want some things. Yes, the spacing is intentional. Saving your needs versus wants is important, but what is the one thing you need more than anything else?

[00:02:27] For me, that's subtracting the superficial in life, attempting to reduce myself to zero to meet life face to face. I feel like I need to own my time and spend it executing my purpose. Saving my money is a tool to allow me to do that.

[00:02:44] And whenever the going got tough and I thought about buying something during the year, I reminded myself of that. Quote, your freedom is more important than money. It is better to live the kind of life you want than to earn more and be constrained. Don't sell your freedom.

[00:03:01] Amen, Sunim. What is your main motivation? What is your why for doing it? What do you need more than your wants? Quote, if you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.

[00:03:20] On one level we all know this stuff already. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. David Foster Wallace. Five things I learned from my buy nothing year. Number one, there's very little that you actually need.

[00:03:38] Realize that nothing you buy is going to make you a more complete or better human. Quote, you've succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. Vernon Howard.

[00:03:50] Number two, keeping shopping cues out of sight, out of mind will help you keep the habit. Aristotle's quoted as saying, through discipline comes freedom. And quote, I agree, but sometimes you need to do more than just rely on your own self-discipline.

[00:04:06] I attribute a lot of my success with no spending to eliminating shopping cues, deleting all shopping apps from my phone, unsubscribing from all clothing brand emails, unfollowing brands on social media. I've realized my personality is very all or nothing, so this approach has helped me

[00:04:23] by keeping shopping out of sight, out of mind. After a short period of time, I just stopped thinking about shopping. My approach going forward will be to group shopping needs into a few intentional activities throughout the year.

[00:04:37] Quote, I am complete, as are you, even in an empty room. The stuff then only augments that which is already whole. Joshua Fields Milburn of the Minimalists. Number three, you become immune to advertising. Having spent the last decade in professional marketing and advertising jobs,

[00:04:57] I know all the tricks of the trade. I've also studied enough about human psychology, buying behavior, and irrationality to understand how advertising affects our minds. By committing to something like no spending, it becomes almost like preventive health for advertising.

[00:05:13] There's nothing that advertising can say or do to get you to buy. Quote, the reason advertising works on most of us is that we feel there is something missing. That if we could only do or have X, we could be happier. That we need whatever happiness they're offering.

[00:05:29] If instead we could find completeness, find happiness, find contentedness, advertising wouldn't work. We'd say, thanks but pass. Leo Babouda of Zen Habits. Number four, you save a ton of money, but more importantly time over the course of a year.

[00:05:48] Most people think a $20 purchase here and a $40 purchase there are no big deal. But that can and will add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of a year in a bad case of lifestyle inflation.

[00:06:01] What else could you spend that money on or better yet, what could you save that money to do? Hint, financial independence retire early. To me, the time saved is more important than money. Shopping takes time. Just like the individual purchases of $20 and $40,

[00:06:18] most people don't think about the 20 minutes here and 40 minutes there spent shopping, again totaling hundreds or thousands of minutes over the course of a year. What would you rather be spending your non-stoppable, non-renewable time on?

[00:06:32] As I mentioned in a previous post, the most underrated byproduct of minimalism is having more time. By eliminating escapism through shopping, you free up time for the things that matter most to you. Quote, time is the new money. Richard Branson, paraphrased by Inc.

[00:06:51] Number five, you begin to craft your own personal definition of enough. It's all about balance. Enough said. Quote, there are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. GK Chesterton, getting started.

[00:07:12] If you're struggling with decluttering or too overwhelmed to even start, try a shopping ban for a period of time. I'll stop the flow of new things entering your home. My recommendation is to start with just one category like clothing,

[00:07:25] instead of a shopping ban on almost all spending categories called turkey. What you'll notice is that the one category you pick begins to rub off on other things because the mindset is there. Good luck. You just listened to the post titled,

[00:07:43] My Buy Nothing Year, How I Bought No Clothing for a Year and Five Things I Learned by Kyle Kowalski of Slow.co. Thank you to Kyle. Personally, I find shopping bans incredibly difficult. Instead, I like to track my spending. I think it does the same thing.

[00:08:01] The first time I came across this kind of thinking was in a class in business school which had us read a book called Your Money or Your Life. And our first homework assignment associated with it was simply tracking our expenses every single day for just one week

[00:08:15] to really bring that mindfulness to our purchases. Because often when we're really anywhere, a grocery store, clothing store, electronic store, or especially online, we'll add things to our cart and check out within minutes and not really feel like that money has been lost.

[00:08:33] Writing it down or even having it done passively for you and checking it later makes us really think about those purchases. And then totaling it up at the end of the week or month can be super eye-opening. You might find that like Kyle, you rarely purchase clothing

[00:08:47] and don't need it, but something else is a lot higher than you expected. You really don't know until you actually track it. And if you're tracking income at the same time, you can finally see what percentage of your income you're actually saving

[00:09:01] which is probably the biggest factor when it comes to how long it'll take you to reach retirement or even semi-retirement. Basically at a place where you don't have to have a day job unless you want one, of course.

[00:09:12] So the practice of tracking your income and expenses is one I love and I enjoyed that homework assignment so much I haven't stopped tracking every single penny in and out of my life since January of 2010.

[00:09:25] If you're curious how I do it, you can see the simplest way I found at oldpodcast.com. That's what you do for today. Have a great start to your week. Thank you for being here with me and listening every day

[00:09:37] and I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.