Steph's Weekly No Buy Spending Recap #22

Week one of being back to 'no buy' and the intersection of rest and financial stress

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Previous recaps: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12 | #13 | #14| #15| #16 | #17 | #18 | #19 | #20 | #21

I hope this letter finds you well! But… actually, not the way that everyone seems to put that at the top of emails these days as a generic form of politeness…

We’re back to our first week of no buy in about 6 months and I’ll be honest, right now I’m hating it. I feel like that’s common in the first week or so though, and it’s already doing the job it’s meant to - stopped me from spending over $100 and highlighted to me a) how emotional my spending feels at the moment and b) how many things I already have directly around me, that I already own and can use freely!

can confirm, beautiful dishes do actually make doing dishes and having them sit there to dry A LOT more pleasant!

I’m not going to do the usual day-by-day spending recap this week because there obviously hasn’t been much spending! I though I’d just chat through the two categories that aren’t exactly ‘regular’ that got a bit of a workout, and then chat about the whole no buy process and what I wanted to buy this week.

I’d actually really love to know what you think of this format as opposed to other weeks where I include all our tracked spending! Do you prefer it? Prefer the other format?

Gifts/food for friends

This is the first category that got a much larger workout than usual this week. We got takeaway and shouted people twice, totalling just under $100. Man it’s expensive to eat these days! Matt found himself working off-site a lot this week (which seriously reduces lunch options) and a workmate bought him lunch one day, so Matt returned the favour.

We also had someone over for dinner and while usually that would mean just including them in our nightly meal we were all feeling it a little so we got pizza.

Honestly, this was a bit of an emotionally fuelled purchase. It was also somewhat practical, we’d been planning to have leftovers for dinner that night so it wouldn’t have stretched to a third person… but the emotions made it very easy to change plans and eat pizza for dinner.

Pets

We bought the usual bag of pet food this week, but we also had to bite the bullet and replace our cat tree/scratching post. We tried to refresh it with new rope last year and while visually we succeeded and it technically functions fine, something about it has meant the cats just…. will not scratch the refreshed posts.

It’s a puzzling situation, but since we’ve moved house and gained a staircase they’ve started scratching on the stairs and that simply won’t do. There’s no way I want to be replacing the carpet in a rental, so ‘drastic’ measures must be taken to save the stairs.

Cross your fingers for me that this fixes the problem!!! I found a cat tree a little cheaper than our last one that still looks like a good size, so hopefully it is actually sufficient. This is the one I purchased, in case you’re curious.

Produce box

Buying groceries isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, but we don’t usually buy produce boxes so I wanted to touch on it briefly! I did an unboxing of it in my weekly grocery haul, which you can watch below.

I’m on the fence about these produce boxes! I’m so so on board with the overall mission. I love that the lettuce didn’t turn up in plastic, in fact nothing did! I also love that it’s saving ‘odd’ produce that would otherwise be wasted.

I added up the items we got though and it appears to not have saved us any money, if anything it cost $2ish more for the produce, and then there was a delivery fee on top of that. That said, the potatoes we ate last night were delicious and it IS a way to get us to branch out and have more variety.

On the flip side of that though, I’m autistic and struggle with new foods. We’re a neurodivergent household in general and often have in the past ended up wasting fresh produce because we haven’t made it a priority to eat it all up/eat around what we have etc…

In the spirit of that, I’ve taken advice from the internet and rearranged our fridge a little so the produce is in the door of the fridge.

I also hung the parsley straight away to dry because I KNOW that’s the only way we’ll get through it. I need to look up how best to handle pak choy. Can I freeze it? It’s already going a bit wilty in the fridge.

I think next fortnight I’ll try the small box from Funky Food instead (the one I just got was from Farmers Pick). I like that their box allows you a little customisation. For example, if they’re sending you potatoes and a tomato you can opt to swap the tomato out for an extra potato. There’s still a limited, seasonal list (oh yes, I also like the eating seasonally aspect of it as well), but you get just a tiny bit more control over what you get.

Fussy Deodorant

I spent a grand total of $3ish on getting my husband a deodorant from Fussy! I bought one from them about 6 weeks ago now and have been absolutely loving it. I’ve seen countless ads for Wild deodorant, they really go ham with their influencer campaigns but the number one thing that always bugged me was the greenwashing of it all. They say they’re a natural deodorant, but their fragrances aren’t natural!!!! UGH.

Fussy on the other hand is very transparent about their ingredients.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use some items with fragrance in them. Budget definitely restricts purchasing all natural items all the time. It’s the fact that they say they’re all natural when they aren’t that gets me.

Oh, that and they’ve just been bought out by Unilever. Again, they’re all ‘we’re environmentally friendly’ but then they’re owned by a huge company that is probably responsible for a whole tonne of plastics usage. I just want honest advertising, ya know?

ANYWAY, I signed up as an affiliate with Fussy because I feel like I’ve road tested it long enough now to solidly say I wholeheartedly recommend them and it turns out as part of that I got an almost-free starter kit (case and refill). Since I already have one and have absolutely no need for a second one I though I’d grab one for Matt!

If you’ve been thinking of trying out Fussy, I have a 15% discount code you can use! This is actually the first discount code I’ve ever gotten, I don’t tend to sign up for many affiliate things so surely that tells you how much I like it haha. The vanilla matcha scent is SO NICE.

Or you can manually input the code ‘ABUNDANTONABUDGET’.

Things I wanted to buy this week…

There’s been 2 main things I wanted to buy this week. One was much easier than the other to say no to surprisingly, and that was a Jasmine Ware jug and plate set. Apparently the jugs are quite difficult to come by but I’m reasonably practical with my collecting and don't see myself ever using a jug of that size and shape, so while there was that first immediate “oh my goodness a rare thing I must get it” impulse because of the scarcity of it all, that dissipated relatively quickly.

The second thing….. oh man. This was significanty more difficult to say no to and I am having to actively choose to say no to it multiple times a day still. Unfortunately it is also seeming to fall into the hyper fixation category and it’s something I’ve wanted for many, many months but it hadn’t been available.

SUBNAUTICA 2 FINALLY RELEASED ON EARLY ACCESS AND IT IS MARVELOUS!!!! Are you kidding me!? The week we go no buy!? 😂

I’m not a hardcore gamer by any stretch, I have only fully completed two or three games IN MY LIFE… and one of them was the first Subnautica game. The graphics are absolutely beautiful, the game play is excellent… it’s just a really well made game with an interesting storyline. We’ll just ignore the fact that it also has elements of being terrifying and that I can only really play it with Matt in the room 😂 If you know me or my content at all you’ll know I have a low tolerance for horror/being scared, but this game is really only scary when it’s scary… if that makes sense. Sometimes some monsters will try and do you a nom, but when that’s not happening it’s actually semi-peaceful.

Anyway, they’ve released it for PC only on early access. It’s one of the most robust early access games many people have seen and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching Markiplier and Jacksepticeye playing it on YouTube… but in some ways that just makes me want it all the more.

The rub is that I don’t own a PC, so not only would I need to purchase the game ($49.95AUD), I’d also have to buy a program to help it run on my iMac… which is $87ish.

The other rub is that this game was meant to be released last year and would have probably been something we allowed to fall into our no buy exceptions because we’ve been waiting years for it, but since it’s now appeared in the first week of our no buy it feels like it would be cheating to allow it. I’m not going to pretend I’m confident I can just wait and wait though 😂

If you haven’t checked it out, highly recommend playing the first game! It’s quite affordable for a playstation game (or you can get it on most other platforms too). Count this as my recommendation for the week!

Anyway… I’ll stop rambling about that now!

The intersection of rest, being unwell and financial stress

I feel like a broken record at this point repeating in almost every piece of content ‘if you’re new here I got a virus in March and I haven’t really recovered’ but ya never know when someone’s going to stumble onto your content in social media land.

Post viral fatigue is next level and not something I’ve experienced to this magnitude before… and I had Covid (badly) twice!! I have some good days but also some bad days and my ability to do anything is about 30-40% of what it used to be.

With that has, understandably, come a lot of emotional turmoil. I’m not good at allowing myself to rest and not be productive so it’s been quite triggering, but I also keep overdoing it because of that (something I’m working on in therapy) and thus probably slowing my progress down.

What does this have to do with finances? Well, for one my income has ground to a halt. In a lot of ways this whole experience is forcing me to confront some things I’ve been putting off for a while - namely that my income has been set up in a way that isn’t really wise. It was based almost entirely off of brand partnerships on my short form social media because they just kept coming in and once I’d completed one and kept everything else afloat with regular content another would come in… so I’d put off all the strategy and things necessary to make sure my income was coming from various sources.

Ironically, the time you’re able to work the least is often when your expenses rise because you’ve been unwell.

And then, all of this gets you pretty down in the dumps and makes you want to buy your way to enjoyment and happiness, especially since your capacity to do free things and create your own joy is diminished.

It’s a really nasty loop to be in, which is why we decided to do a no buy. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s clear cut and I know I personally needed that black and white scenario for a while to recalibrate my mind.

It’s ironic to me that the things I’ve needed the most are the things I most struggle to do and give myself. Rest, patience, taking a bit of an income dip to readjust things so my income isn’t all reliant on one very time and labour intensive stream.

I know I need to rest more. I know I need to give my body and nervous system the time it needs to recover… but I’ve fallen into this cycle of fear. I MUST keep working however I can, because I need whatever income I can manage just to be able to sustain all the health-related appointments I’ve been having to have. But then I’m living a life full of fear, and that isn’t good for healing or my nervous system.

See how it’s all connected?

So this week I’m rejigging some things and redoubling my efforts in therapy specifically around this topic. I’m working on putting rest first (as much as I want to do the opposite) and taking it easy, taking more regular breaks etc. I took a little time over the weekend to prep and organise a little more than usual for the week to, to eliminate effort throughout the week wherever I can manage to do so.

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That’s it for another week! If you’ve made it this far you’re a real one, thanks for reading my words and caring about this little corner of the internet. If you have gotten all the way here, drop an 🌊 ocean emoji to let me know… and to celebrate the launch of Subnautica 2!

Also, just in case you missed it, I uploaded another video this past week - a house tour! I go through and point out all the thrifted items we have and give a little backstory/context to our home. I find it really helpful to know that homes don’t just happen, they’re curated and refined over years!!

With that, I shall bid you farewell for another week! May your pillow always be the right temperature and may you be unexpectedly delighted by something this week ❤️

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