if you’ve seen my instagram stories lately, you may have seen me use the hashtag: #mmnobuyjuly.

though I made it a highlight on my page, I never really had a static way to explain just why i’m doing this! so today, i’m breaking down the 2 main reasons as to why i’m partaking in this month long “spending freeze.”

number one

for YEARS, i’ve always said “i’m going to start my [enter birthday age here] year off RIGHT.” and while i have done that in some aspects, the last half of my 20s didn’t really start how I wanted it to, so i really want to turn things around for this next birthday. while no, I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions (why delay good habits that you can just start now, the new year is just an arbitrary timeframe when you think about it), I like being able to look back on birthdays and see how much progress I made. does it make sense? no. is it kind of hypocritical? yes. will I do it anyway? YUP.

so with my 26th birthday rapidly approaching, I once again find myself wanting to start this new age in a better frame of mind. so i’m implementing changes to improve myself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and yes, financially.

number two

especially with how things have been going over the past few months - a pandemic, much more light being shed on racial injustice, and a whole lot of other very stressful things - i’ve done my fair share of online shopping. as an avid retail therapy goer, I really want to be more intentional about where my dollars are going. i’m using no buy july as a stepping stone to really see what I buy that I need, and what I buy that I want.

so as a rule, I of course can buy things like groceries and other essentials, but I won’t be buying anything other than what I actually need. if I slip up once or twice, i’m giving myself a break - it’s hard to go from 60 to 0 like that. but so far, so good.

what I learned + how it went

okay so now that it’s august and I can officially say that I learned A LOT last month. resisting the temptation to impulse buy is hard, especially when we’re in a pandemic and there’s little else to do. but whenever I got an email advertising a sale, or any email that said “hey babes you have to have this for summer!!!!!! :) <3” I unsubscribed without hesitation. so not only is my inbox much cleaner, but i’m also not faced with 100 emails every day showing me products that I don’t need, but want.

after from the inbox cleanse, I was faced with less and less products to buy every day. of course, there’s still the problem of ads and social media, but I resisted temptation for the most part. the only things I bought (other than food), were some craft supplies and cleaning products, and additions to my Stoney Clover collection (which take 5 weeks to ship, and I wanted them in time for my birthday, which was roughly 5 weeks away at the time). other than that, I really didn’t buy much.

one other HUGE thing that I did was this: if I felt myself ready to oh, say, drop $310 on a cute purse that I definitely do NOT need - i’d move that $310 into my savings account.

while I’ll lift the ban on my spending going forward, I can honestly say that it’s much easier for me to just avoid buying a bunch of stuff. of course there will be some days where I have a little too much fun with “add to cart,” but I’m also limiting how much I can spend in a transaction, and letting things sit in my cart for a while now. if I come back to it and decide I don’t really want it, or it’s sold out by that time, I know I don’t really need to have it.

all in all, I’ll definitely be doing this at least once a year, or maybe every few months, just to check in with myself and my bank account.