Steph's Weekly Low Buy Spending Recap #21
When your spending starts to get out of hand... here's how I'm tackling that (as someone who used to staunchly avoid their finances)
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It has been quite the week, how are you doing? As I sat down just now to write this I had to doublecheck that I did actually do a recap last week! And indeed I did, I just once again feel like I have lived 1000 lives this week… Anyone else? 😂
As always, this post is too chock-full of goodness to fit in an email so you’ll find it cuts off at the end. Make sure to view in your app/browser to get the best experience!
I have a confession to make as we head into this weeks recap… our spending is getting a little bit out of hand. Nowhere near as bad as it's been previously (the lessons we've learned from our past no buy years have definitely stuck)… and I think if I didn’t say anything most people would view our spending as ‘not too bad’, but it still is definitely not lining up with our overall goal of living intentionally and our financial goals as a whole. And that’s the main thing.
I mentioned last week and possibly even in the recap before that I was thinking I know by period could be a good idea for us to reset a little bit, but if I'm honest with myself I don't think I was fully committed to that when I said it. I threw it out there as a vague idea, not as something that I was committing and planning to do.
After the spending that happened this week, we are 100% committing to doing a no buy period! I was chatting with my husband Matt over the weekend about this and we're both on board. We're going to do a strict no buy period (with a few small exceptions) until we hit a certain savings goal. I'm not gonna say what that is here just for privacy sake, I do like to keep at least a few things off the internet 😂 it's an attainable goal though, and I estimate that it won't take longer than two months of the most, but hopefully it will be more like one month.
As much as we are definitely done with our full on no buy years, in a lot of ways once we settled into things during that time I found just not buying things much much easier than being on a low buy year. It really is the language around it all I think, for me that black-and-white ‘no I cannot buy anything’ language really worked well because then I didn't even entertain buying things, with our low buy year, our rules have been to stick to our budgeted categories, which have been quite thorough and robust and allowed for a little bit of spending on activities, a little bit of thrifting and spending money… But everything was very categorised. But we haven't been sticking to that budget 100%
It's so easy to go to the thrift store and go over a budget by $10 and dismiss that as "oh well". It's so easy to make excuses for buying things! I'm proud of the fact that the things that we buy these days are significantly more intentional and thought through than they have ever been before, but that doesn't negate the fact that we promised ourselves we’d do a low buy year with certain rules and parameters and we haven't really been sticking to that.
These kinds of scenarios always bring me to one main set of questions, what's working, what's not and why… and what needs to happen based on this? Sometimes the reason that something isn't working is really valid and it actually means that something needs to change, other times it means that there's not enough supports in place to make something possible. We've been very busy and very tired, and it's so much easier to end up spending more to have some fun and (in the case of this past Saturday) a really bad day around.
And so, we're going to do a no buy period! I find these to be so incredibly helpful for refocusing on creating our own fun and our own joy. Society and culture and capitalism have taught us to just spend money to be happy, but when I actually stop and look around our home at all the things that we have and own, all the possibilities that are available to us… There's so many things that we have direct access to already that can help to make us happy or turn a bad day around which year is up! We don't NEED to buy things! Sometimes we just need a reset and a reminder of that. A renewed call to pay attention to what we already have, and the joy right in front of us.
And sometimes, we also need a little bit of accountability. Which is why I love so much about this platform that I have, not just here on sub stock but also on my other social media channels. I don't think it's a culture we talk about money enough, there's so much shame around things that are just part of being human. Everyone experiences these things, everyone struggles sometimes not to spend money that they shouldn't, everyone struggles to save. Sometimes, everyone has thoughts that they want to fit in with the people around them. These are normal things to wrestle with!
But when we don't talk about these things, it's almost like these facts turn into secrets, secret shame that we hold close. I mean, when was the last time you turned to a friend and said “you know what… I'm really struggling with my spending right now! I am going to do XYZ to combat that.”
My bet is that you have probably never or very rarely had a conversation like that, because it's just not what we do in our society! But I really wonder what our finances would look like, what our relationships would look like, and what our overall society would look like if we had a more open discourse around our finances.
Okay, now let's get onto the actual weekly spending recap!
Monday's main out of the ordinary expense (amongst the usual bills and health costs) was a purchase from Dangerfield! I am having handbag issues now that I have gone a lot more analog with my devices. Going from carrying an iPhone to carrying my kindle, my point-and-shoot camera, my planner, a notebook, my iPod, and my phone… There's a lot more things residing in my handbag right now and my handbag is really not big enough for all of these things! Sometimes I leave one or two items at home but I'm finding that I never know when I'm going to need something, you never know when you're going to get stuck waiting for five or 10 minutes and that's when I find myself wanting to reach for my Kindle and most of the time I've left it at home.
I still had $50 left from selling my iPhone last week, so I ordered some bags from Dangerfield that are convertible!!!!! The chronic pain girlies will get it. They both convert from shoulder bags to backpacks. I don't intend to keep both of them, I just wasn't sure which one would be best and just needed to try them out and see/feel them in person so I ordered both. If neither of them work, I will just have to send both back and go back to the drawing board a bit.
As of the time of writing they haven't arrived yet, but they are due to arrive later today so hopefully I will be able to put an actual picture in here of them and let you know my initial thoughts before I have to click post on this!
(A little later…)
They arrived! I could tell almost straight away that the darker bag was not the one. I didn’t expect the middle clasp to actually be a functional clasp. Cool in some ways, but that makes 3 clasps for the front of the bag and that’s a little too much. It’s also way too stiff for my tastes, even holding it open to see into the bag was a little tricky.
The brown bag I was a bit apprehensive about, I didn’t think it would look any good as a cross body… or even WORK as a cross body… but it does! So it’s an easy choice, and as an added bonus, the brown bag was the cheaper of the two - it’s on sale for $38 at the moment. It’ll fit heaps of stuff and making it into a backpack doesn’t take any effort at all, it’s set up so you can wear it either way at any time which is pretty much the dream setup!
Wednesday found me making yet another unexpected purchase! I was editing a video for my YouTube channel about how to switch to a dumb phone in 2026, and as I was doing a final little bit of research and getting some final bits of information so that I could post the video I stumbled upon a new "dumb phone" on the JB hi-fi website it seems like it's only just been released, and it is a smart dumb phone.
Part of the reason that I made the video on how to switch to a dumb phone in 2026 is because I realised through my research that a lot of people don't know how many options there are for dumb phones these days. Yes, they are still the true dumb phones that don't have any apps on them, but there are also a bunch of what's called feature phones that have a variety of capabilities depending on the phone, and a lot of them have the ability to download some basic versions of apps!
The tricky thing with dumb phones, and our culture the way that it is these days, is that you can't just buy any phone that you see on the Internet and know that it will work. A lot of phones that are available internationally won't work with our 4G set up here in Australia, so while there are quite a few options that run a barebones version of android, most of them don't work here in Australia. So finding this one on the JB hi-fi website was very exciting, especially because it's only $99, which is a very approachable price for what it is!
So I decided to order it mostly to review on my YouTube channel so that I could let people know it's around, since it's so new I haven't been able to find any information about it on the Internet and I know that I really value review videos, but as I was telling Matt about it, he said he'd love to road test it because he has been really wanting to switch to a dumb phone but has a much higher need for certain apps for work than I do which has made the possibility a bit trickier for him.
The only downside of this purchase is that the JB hi-fi website didn't disclose that it's actually an item that is on backorder, so I'm not sure when it's actually going to arrive 😂
Do you ever have moments when someone points out something so simple and you wonder how on earth didn't occur to you before? I had that experience watching this video below… This is a new favourite YouTube channel of mine!
Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that I could thrift CDs! And I own a CD player! So on Thursday Matt and I went down to a thrift store and had a look at CDs. I actually hit the CD jackpot, Matt found this passenger CD which I couldn't believe was sitting in an op shop!
However, tragedy struck when we went home to play our new CDs… Only to discover that my CD player has stopped working. To be fair, I've had this CD player since I was 10 and I got it from my Nan who had it for a while before that… so it's at least 25+ years old at this point, because I know my Nan had had it for years before I got it. We tried to fix it over the weekend, but sadly it is dead dead. I'm now on a mission to find myself another CD player, which is proving to be surprisingly difficult! It seems that there's a few city players available on Facebook marketplace but all of them ironically have the CD player part broken. I've checked in a few op shop shops over the weekend and wasn't able to find one either.
I'm going to keep my eye out on Facebook marketplace and also maybe visit a few other thrift stores in my area. Finding a CD player is one of my few exceptions for our no buy period, because it seems to be one of those if you find it, buy it type items. At least if you don't want to spend $80-$90 on one. I just don't think I should need to spend that much money on a CD player, surely I can find one under $20!
We did go over out thrifting budget by $11.90 though 🙈 I think once the no buy period is over I may need to up my thrifting budget a little if I can. I have a lot of little goals that I’d like to achieve both clothing and home wise that I want to exclusively thrift and I don’t know that $15 every 2 weeks is entirely realistic for that when we’re also collecting physical media. I’m not sure… I’m going to sit on that decision while we do the no buy period so I’m not making a purely emotional decision.
Groceries day! We’ve been living on a smaller grocery budget recently ($250 every 2 weeks, down from $275) and it’s actually been going smoothly! I talk a little more about that in my grocery haul here:
I’m attempting something new as of next week though, I’ll update more in next week’s recap!
Saturday was a super weird day. I experienced both extremes, a really terrible start to the day and then a really great end of the day.
If you've read any of my previous recap, you'll know I've been dealing with some pretty frustrating health issues recently and I need to get a blood test done. I attempted to get that done on Saturday morning and it was an absolute disaster. As a chronic illness girl, I've had quite a few blood tests in my life, but I still find them really nerve racking no matter how familiar I am with them.
That said, I am thankfully not a fainter and usually my veins cooperate quite well. Saturday though, they decided that they just did not want to come to the party and despite many efforts we weren't able to get the actual test done. What made it so much worse though, was a truly horrible nurse. I've never met such a rude person in my entire life, let alone someone in the medical field. She was so so rude and overwhelming, so the minute I got back into the car with Matt I just burst into tears. I definitely won't be going back there again!
We went home, had a bit of a rest on some lunch and then decided to go thrift thing for a little bit of fun after a really weird start to a day.
And I absolutely hit the jackpot! I struck gold! I found the most treasury treasure that ever did treasure!
A few months ago I stumbled upon a dinner set on Facebook marketplace that I just fell in love with. I didn't know anything about it when I fell in love with it, I just knew that the pattern made me feel so incredibly happy and cheerful and it was only $20! Sadly though after arranging pickup I got completely ghosted.
It wasn't until I googled the dinner set afterwards that I realised that I had almost scored the biggest bargain of the century… It turned out that the set was by Churchill China, based out of England. And the set that I had stumbled upon was called the Emily! It’s from the 90s and no longer in print and it turns out that single dinner plates from this set were selling for anywhere from $20-$30 each! I also didn't really see many online available, let alone any sets so I pretty much dismissed the notion I've ever getting a full set because… Paying $30 a plate!? Ya girl is already collecting Jasmine ware very slowly… It wasn't gonna happen!
Until I turned around in the little vintage store that is tucked inside Helping Hands Op Shop Airport West on Saturday… And found myself looking at not just a set of the Emily dinner away… But a HUGE set! There were 8 teacups, and 10 to 12 of everything else.
I’ve never decided to buy something so quickly in my life, my husband will attest that I am usually very slow to make my purchasing decisions. But then I saw the price tag… $350! Excuse me!? Surely you're joking… Even for that many pieces…
After some lovely chats with some really beautiful old ladies who run the op shop, they ended up giving it to me for $250! Which is a really great price for how many pieces there are, but I've also rationalised it by deciding to sell a few of the pieces individually. I absolutely don't need 12 dinner plates, I don't even really need 10! I'm going to keep 9 to 10 of each item, and sell the extras. That's enough that if we break a plate or bowl we will still have a solid 8 place set without having to spend a crazy amount of money on replacements
And this is going to be our dinner set for the rest of forever. There's probably a lot of people out there that wouldn't use this set, but I just don't believe in having something so incredibly beautiful and joyful and not using it. We can absolutely be careful with it, and while they are kind of old… they’re also really not. Plenty of people are still using their dinnerware from the 90s. And it’s so so so worth the joy!
I've been trying to bring more joy to dinner time. I think I've spoken about this here before, I find dinner time to be really tough because I'm usually in quite a lot of pain by the end of the day and then find cooking quite taxing because of that. But I really want dinner time to be something enjoyable, and I want our food to be something that's enjoyable rather than something that just gets thrown in the oven because we absolutely have to eat and then cult down as we sit in front of the TV trying to zone out and distract ourselves from our lives. These plates definitely help with that.
But I think at this point, you can definitely see why I want to reign in our spending as well.
Ah, Sunday. The end of the weekend came around much too quickly. We ended the day placing an order for a Gilmore girls jumper from big W. Our Mother's Day gift to my mother-in-law is going to be a little bit belated, but it will get there and it will include this Gilmore girls jumper!
My weekly recommendation!
You're kind of getting two recommendations here, because I mentioned my newest favourite YouTube account above! I've also really been enjoying the Testaments TV show. I've read both of the handmaids tale books, the Testaments is the second one if you didn't know.
I've only read it once and it was awhile ago, so I can't really speak to how accurate it is to the books… I have a feeling it is skewed a little bit and is more of a loosely based off sort of scenario, but either way I'm really enjoying it so far! It's well worth a watch if you've got access to it.
And there we have it for another week. Next week I will be coming to you from a no buy week! I’m going to try and take more photos this week so that I can share what we’re doing instead of buying things… And I’m also going to try and take more note of the things that I want to buy but don’t so that I can share that with you as well. I think it’ll be fun to write down how much everything would’ve cost if I’d actually bought it. It’ll be motivating to see how much we’ve saved!
I’ll catch you next week!
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fwiw I've been a cd op shopper for years because I listen to them in my car BUT you can also just listen to CDs on the DVD player if you have one - that is my trick for not actually having to own an actual cd player