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My 'buy nothing year': How one woman saved $27,000

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A woman has saved tens of thousands of dollars after she vowed to buy nothing for a whole year.

It may sound extreme, but caught up in a consumerist society, Michelle McGagh thought it would change her relationship with money forever.

The personal financial journalist became a minimalist, and stopped cluttering her house with possessions and making unnecessary purchases. Now she is about $27,000 better off for it.

170110-no-spend-year-author-feature.jpg



The Londoner wrote in the Telegraph it was a mortgage she took out on a home in 2013 that led her to think more about her spending.

Looking into minimalism on American websites, she stumbled across Buy Nothing Day, a time when people are urged to avoid shopping for a day. She then wondered if she could attempt to buy nothing for a year.

“Spending nothing for a whole year would do wonders for my wallet and stop me from refilling my empty shelves with more possessions,” she wrote.

“It sounds extreme, but I’d set myself budgets and spending plans in the past and they’d always fallen by the wayside on my next night out.”

McGagh would pay for necessities — her mortgage, bills, insurance and charity donations. That all equated to about $2,200 a month.

“After a year of no spending I realized that I valued financial security over material possessions: I don’t want to be forced to stay on the treadmill of work just to pay off a home loan for the next two decades or accumulate more stuff.
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So, this article is making the rounds again. Its from last month, but has resurfaced. People are saying how its horrible, since this couple has money and she isn't actually not spending money, but just living how a lot of us live; not having money and only being able to spend on the bare minimums. Seeing lot of comment about how she is privileged.People have calculated that based on how much she spends, her bills, etc she was making 70-80k a year.

Anyway; Here is the full article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/buy-nothing-year-one-woman-saved-22000/
 
I detest articles like this. It always comes off as smug "I did this thing that is unrealistic for 99% of people and now i am happy and telling people what to do with their lives"

The worse was those people that live like Victorians.
 
Well atleast she could teach some people making in excess of 160k a year a thing or two in San Francisco
 
Slayven said:
I detest articles like this. It always comes off as smug "I did this thing that is unrealistic for 99% of people and now i am happy and telling people what to do with their lives"

The worse was those people that live like Victorians.
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Yep. This is always my reaction.
 
Saved more in a year than what some people have to live off for a year. Someone post that hilarious pic that depicts six figure income earners as middle class.
 
Poverty tourism never comes off as enlightened, only smug.

If you want to do it for yourself, I think it's great. Writing preachy articles about it is not.
 
Good we buy too much crap. Also if people want to protest the government masses not buying anything would be the most effective way since so much of the economy relies on consumer spending.
 
Saving money is awesome. My wife and I make a comfortable living and still manage to maintain a healthy focus on saving (for retirement, to put our daughters through school and just saving in general).

With that said, there's a line between focusing on saving and not being able to enjoy anything in life when you're consumed by it.
 
CrocMother said:
Poverty tourism never comes off as enlightened, only smug.

If you want to do it for yourself, I think it's great. Writing preachy articles about it is not.
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I wouldn't call it poverty tourism. It's not rather new either.

It's rather old and came in vogue with a book called Your Money Or Your Life, which heralded the voluntary simplicity movement.

It's been resurrected as Minimalism of late in internet circles. Here's a good documentary on it:

https://minimalismfilm.com/

But basically, there has been a small swell of folks seeing that this intense capitalist machine of consumption doesn't necessary make us happy, yet we're bombarded with thousands of marketing messages that we do.

Funnily enough, and this is where the criticism comes in, many of the leaders of these movements are former or current Yuppies.
 
BumRush said:
Saving money is awesome. My wife and I make a comfortable living and still manage to maintain a healthy focus on saving (for retirement, to put our daughters through school and just saving in general).

With that said, there's a line between focusing on saving and not being able to enjoy anything in life when you're consumed by it.
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The people doing this do it because consumerism is taking over life and people are searching for happiness with material possessions and no matter what they buy they still feel empty. You can argue they are going too far in the other direction but I agree that you can't buy happiness.
 
Nipo said:
The people doing this do it because consumerism is taking over life and people are searching for happiness with material possessions and no matter what they buy they still feel empty. You can argue they are going too far in the other direction but I agree that you can't buy happiness.
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Not saying that at all, but I agree to an extent. But when you turn down going out with friends and pass on moments that will make lasting memories (if they cost money), to me that's going to far.

*not saying the article says this, I'm just commenting on where I draw the line*
 
CrocMother said:
Poverty tourism never comes off as enlightened, only smug.

If you want to do it for yourself, I think it's great. Writing preachy articles about it is not.
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What is someone is interested in trying it for themselves and wants to read about someone else's experience in order to help themselves prepare?
 
BumRush said:
Not saying that at all, but I agree to an extent. But when you turn down going out with friends and pass on moments that will make lasting memories (if they cost money), to me that's going to far.

*not saying the article says this, I'm just commenting on where I draw the line*
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I'm always suspicious when these sorts of things are done by professional writers.

If this story catches on, you know that there's going to be a book that follows.
 
There are a lot of people who spend excessive amounts of money on complete junk. Lootcrate... new shoes every week... expensive bottles of wine every weekend... new video games with an existing massive backlog (gulp)... for those people, this kind of article is great and if it just convinces one or two of them to maybe not equate shiny new things with happiness, it helps.

For people who barely survive, live paycheck to paycheck, who have to decide whether to pay the electric bill or the water bill this month? Yeah, comes across as huge narcissistic assholes. Its not really written for them though.
 
Plus I’d need to eat. But there was no budget for luxuries – that meant no cinema trips, no nights in the pub, no takeaways or restaurant meals, no new clothes, no holidays, no gym memberships, not even a KitKat or cheeky cheesecake from the supermarket.
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So, woman who has a compulsive shopping issue tries living like someone whose budget is actually tight for a year, and finds out her budget actually has 22k£ of wiggle room.

And "No holidays" means "Six weeks of camping with brand new gear".
 
My main problem is buying food. For example I'll buy a bunch of veggies and only eat a third of them before they expire. Sometimes I'll spend 10 bucks at lunch when I could bring lunch for a couple bucks instead. I could probably save $100 bucks a month if I bought less and planned better with my meals.

I also sometimes buy games and then don't finish them, but that probably only accounts for $200 or so a year so not a huge deal.
 
This would be far more interesting if this was a couponer/hoarder who woke up and decided to live off of all the canned goods and peanut butter for a year. Mortgage+utilities+work travel expenses only. This is just a bit mundane imho.
 
Saving is very easy, I get less than ten grand a year as a student, before rent, and I still manage to put away three grand in my savings account each year. I hardly ever eat out, I don't drink that much (and if I do it'll be somewhere cheap) and very rarely buy anything other than clothes, now and again (and usually only when there's a sale or student discount on). My food budget is £35/week and it's plenty.

That being said, I haven't done much long-term saving. But I've travelled a fair bit of the world off my own back using those savings and I'm only 21.
 
Aureon said:
So, woman who has a compulsive shopping issue tries living like someone whose budget is actually tight for a year, and finds out her budget actually has 22k£ of wiggle room.

And "No holidays" means "Six weeks of camping with brand new gear".
Click to expand...

If a holiday is usually like this:

However, the strict rules of my challenge meant I missed out on my annual girls’ holiday to Ibiza. As I waved off my friends when they left excitedly for the airport, I felt gutted.
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Then not flying around the world counts as no holiday for her.
 
Gotta love this specific breed of first world delusion... you have the power to change everything as long as it means absolutely nothing. Meanwhile the minimum monthly wage in Sierra Leone is 115$.
 
This reminds me of some of the threads on /r/personalfinance where people boast about knocking of 30/40/50/100K in debt. Then you click to read more and it's usually one of the following:
I moved home with my parents while making 80K a year
or
I got a windfall of 150K and then moved home to save up the other 20K

I'm all for people cutting excessive spending, but there is a line between being cheap and being frugal.
 
this is the stupidest fucking article

breaking news: not spending your money means that you aren't spending your money
 
Poverty tourism? She wasn't trying to see how poor people live. She was trying to figure out if stuff actually made her happy.
 
The tl;dr version:

How to save 27k a year:
Step 1) Find a job that pays 100k dollar a year
Step 2) Don't waste money on stupid stuff
Step 3) Done
 
Finding Mr. Money Mustache in my senior year of college has seriously impacted my whole outlook on life. I'm not as extreme as many people yet, but it's caused me to think about spending more, and challenge my consumerist habits.
Weirdly enough, that website has probably changed my behavior and way of thinking more than any other single thing I can think of. Though How to Win Friends and Influence People made a big impression on me as well. So needless to say, I'm all for this type of low-spending lifestyle.
 
MonorailCat said:
The tl;dr version:

How to save 27k a year:
Step 1) Find a job that pays 100k dollar a year
Step 2) Don't waste money on stupid stuff
Step 3) Done
Click to expand...

Haha. Many of us on GAF could go years without buying another videogame if we were forced to beat everything in our Steam or cheap PS+ sale backlogs first.

If you live in a major city, you can gwt all of the books or movies you could read/watch for free from the library.

Give up dining out, the cinema/theatre, and destination vacations, and your entertainment budget is now 0 dollars.

That and restricting what you are allowed to buy at the supermarket get you a buy nothing year under these rules, provided that biking to work is at all feasible.

Assuming that the $2200/month is her share of her and her husband's joint expenses, she's still spending $55k a year for a two person family.
 
hawk2025 said:
My "buy nothing year":

*goes on six-week vacation with pre-purchased tents and bikes*


Fuck off.
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IMO the whole point of living like this is to spend on things that are more important an bring value to your life, rather than detract from it.
 
Guess I just need to find a well paying job, develop a need to spend copious amounts of excess money, stop said spending, and revel in my newfound savings!

Can't wait to tell those silly poor people they're living their lives wrong.
 
Article is nowhere near as bad as some of you are making it out to be, lol.
 
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