I love HGTV, especially the show Fixer Upper! It's great! I love seeing their visions for each home and family come to life. My love for Fixer Upper inspired me to continue following my visions for our home. I have been painting our wood trim white and I recently started painting our kitchen cabinets.
Our kitchen/dinette area has a huge blank wall and I kept envisioning a large chalkboard in the middle. One that my girls can enjoy drawing on and I can leave fun quotes or special messages on for our family.
I started looking on craigslist for a chalkboard. I found exactly what I wanted, but it was already sold. Bummer! But I was surprised a few weeks later from the seller - he had another chalkboard available! I replied immediately and my husband picked it up a few hours later.
Did we need the chalkboard - no. But I really really wanted it. A chalkboard the same size brand new would easily be $250. I saved $200 buying it used. I would call that a thrifty success!
My husband and I decided to pick a theme to lead us through 2016. We chose the word THRIFTY. This word has so much meaning for us.
First, my husband launched a thrifty system this year that allows you to track all your spending. You can categorize your expenses and compare months. This makes it easy to see how you spend your money so you can make changes, helping you reach financial freedom. Check it out here. We have been using my husband's system since August 2015. It has been eye opening to see how much we spend in a given month.
Second, I've read a few articles about people who didn't buy anything new for a year (With a few predetermined exceptions - hello, underwear). This seemed like a fun experiment.
Having bought a few things from resale shops in the past year I am more comfortable with not buying new. I know that I am a bit of an impulse buyer (hello pretty smelling candle at the grocery store that costs $13) If I bought this candle once a week that's $676 dollars on candles in a single year. And now I ask myself - Do I need the candles? Can I hold off on buying a candle this week?
So to help us take our minimalist lifestyle to the next level we decided to be thrifty this year. Here are the rules we are following:
1. If we don't need it. Don't buy it!
2. If we need it. Can we buy it resale?
3. If we can't find it resale, can we hold off and keep looking?
We do have a list of exceptions. Here they are:
1. If we need underwear - we will buy new. Same for running shoes.
2. Vacations don't count (souvenirs: one/child)
3. Remodeling our home - there are some things that we won't be doing resale on.
There are two things that my husband and I want to be able to do financially - vacations and remodeling our home. And that is why they are on our exceptions list. By becoming more thrifty in other areas of our life, we will be able to save more money for these exciting adventures.
Over this year I'll share the things we bought resale, decided not to buy, and decided to sell. This is a big experiment. Before we make any financial decision we will be asking - is this thrifty? I'm excited to see what this year brings!
Have you ever spent a year being thrifty? Share your experience with me! How did it benefit/change your life? What did you learn? And did you keep it up the next year?
