Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op of the thread, I just went to the store, and spent $90 on groceries. Not bad, but then! We went to the garden store and spent $25 on seeds and soil. Bought like five different types of seeds. Heritage watermelon radish seeds, anyone? I was only planning to get some tomato and cilantro seeds... Fail.

Slippery slope there OP! Do gardening supplies count as groceries? I say yes.. AS LONG AS you actually plant them. Also, perhaps you could start some seedlings and gift them to gardening friends for Easter or something -- that's not BUY NOTHING but it is a nice things to do with your extra seeds! (I"d love some).

ALso -- if you really feel you "failed" -- you can return the seeds you didn't mean to buy.

I tend to kill plants in containers... so I don't expect my success rate to be high with seeds, but who knows? Maybe this year I'll do a better job and it'll be a net gain. Good idea about gifting seedings! That'd be super cute.

We are entering the hard part of the year. Post Christmas it's easy because the natural tendency is to back off the glut and spending after Christmas. Plus it's the middle of winter without much of a need to spend money.

But now comes Easter and spring break and gardening and graduations and summer stuff. Hold on as long as you can but the summer spending period is closing in fast.

That said, it's also a good time to sell stuff related to the changing season on eBay and Craigslist.

Op here. I didn't buy anything yesterday or today. However, I don't think that's going to make what I didn't buy (lattes) cheaper!

You all buy nothing I'll be buying taking advantage of prices that are lower because you all aren't buying.

Anonymous wrote:Op of the thread, I just went to the store, and spent $90 on groceries. Not bad, but then! We went to the garden store and spent $25 on seeds and soil. Bought like five different types of seeds. Heritage watermelon radish seeds, anyone? I was only planning to get some tomato and cilantro seeds... Fail.

Slippery slope there OP! Do gardening supplies count as groceries? I say yes.. AS LONG AS you actually plant them. Also, perhaps you could start some seedlings and gift them to gardening friends for Easter or something -- that's not BUY NOTHING but it is a nice things to do with your extra seeds! (I"d love some).

ALso -- if you really feel you "failed" -- you can return the seeds you didn't mean to buy.

Op of the thread, I just went to the store, and spent $90 on groceries. Not bad, but then! We went to the garden store and spent $25 on seeds and soil. Bought like five different types of seeds. Heritage watermelon radish seeds, anyone? I was only planning to get some tomato and cilantro seeds... Fail.

Anonymous wrote:Also, I wanted to add if you want to do a buy nothing April or rejuvenate this thread as a buy nothing for the rest of March, I'd be happy to join!

I will reboot in April. MY heart just isn't in it, this month. I mean, I'm still pretty much broke, so I'm not buying a ton of stuff, but I do just need to buy some things.

Primarily:

My kids need stuff. Constantly. I'm trying to get them to be less needy and spendy but that's just where they are right now. Wondering if maybe I should put them on their own clothing-grooming-school supply-activities allowance and just given them $100 each month to buy or save for what they want.

me -- clothing -- I am gaining weight and nothing fits. I keep saying I will lose weight but it doesn't happen and I feel miserable in the clothes I am wearing.

Anonymous wrote:I'll play. First two months spending non-food, non-household repair things amounted to two magazines. But $1500 to attend a family funeral in February threw me off.

March not as miserly as I had hoped for. Bought a dress for Easter even though I didn't really need one. Bought a supply of erasable pens for about $20 that I use to do puzzles. Ran out of SPF face cream and bought at Clinique instead of something from the CVS. Will rack up $2500 in medical costs this month that the insurance company may or may not re-imburse. And today at work I bought a latte at Starbucks.

Also wondering whether to declare March a failure and look forward to resuming in April.

March is not a failure but you are slipping, PP. $20 for erasable pens??? What's the matter with pencils, hmmmm?

I'll play. First two months spending non-food, non-household repair things amounted to two magazines. But $1500 to attend a family funeral in February threw me off.

March not as miserly as I had hoped for. Bought a dress for Easter even though I didn't really need one. Bought a supply of erasable pens for about $20 that I use to do puzzles. Ran out of SPF face cream and bought at Clinique instead of something from the CVS. Will rack up $2500 in medical costs this month that the insurance company may or may not re-imburse. And today at work I bought a latte at Starbucks.

Also wondering whether to declare March a failure and look forward to resuming in April.

Also, I wanted to add if you want to do a buy nothing April or rejuvenate this thread as a buy nothing for the rest of March, I'd be happy to join!

Hi Op of the previous months! I'm the Op of this thread.

I didn't post because no one else seemed interested this round, but I'm actually doing pretty well! I haven't spend much extra and saved already a couple hundred over what I would have.

I still cave once in a while. I forgot to bring lunch once this week for example. I grabbed coffee with a colleague the week before. But it's a vast improvement over the previous months.

Thank you for your buy nothing threads!

Anonymous wrote:

Why wait until April. If you're in debt, you could start working on a spending diet now.

Good point!! Probably because I am demoralized, and I BOUGHT NOTHING for TWO STINKING MONTHS and then succumbed and bought new underwear and it was SOOOOOOOOOO nice to have new underwear. And I bought my daughter the stinking PSAT books she wanted and that just seemed to open the floodgates of spending. I ordered some erasable markers off of Amazon for my job at school (even though I promised myself NO MORE SPENDING for school stuff) just because I really needed them. And I bought my daughter a new binder for school AND some mechanical pencils AND the new water bottle she asked for back in January. (I told her no back then, but I caved!!) AND my son is growing out of his shirts because he is working out, so I bought him three new T-Shirts and didn't even make him get them at a thrift store.

BUT YOU DON'T SAVE MONEY AND PAY DOWN DEBT BY BEING SPENDY-MCSPENDYPANTS.

It's Buy Nothing Ides of March for me!!

Anonymous wrote:Hey OP, I'm the OP of Buy Nothing January and buy Nothing February.

March has KICKED MY ASS and I am not Buying Nothing this month whatsoever, and I am spending money on things like take out to boot!

But, I'm not spending money I don't have, and I'm still paying down my credit card debt, so that's something.

Good for you for starting -- how have you been doing?

Me, I'm waiting for BUY NOTHING APRIL.

Why wait until April. If you're in debt, you could start working on a spending diet now.

Hey OP, I'm the OP of Buy Nothing January and buy Nothing February.

March has KICKED MY ASS and I am not Buying Nothing this month whatsoever, and I am spending money on things like take out to boot!

But, I'm not spending money I don't have, and I'm still paying down my credit card debt, so that's something.

Good for you for starting -- how have you been doing?

Me, I'm waiting for BUY NOTHING APRIL.

I hadn't seen Op of the February thread post a March thread! So I thought I'd get the ball rolling for this month.

So far I've only purchased groceries (yesterday for $105). Thanks to the last two threads, I've brought my lunch to work consistently and got rid of my daily coffee habit at work. I also stopped going to Target to get out of the house with the kids. We've been going on walks or baking instead depending on the weather. I haven't been closely tracking, but off the top of my head, I'd say I saved hundreds of dollars as a result.

Thank you, original Op, for keeping me accountable!