What constitutes a buy nothing year?

[ertyu]

I think the question in itself is helpful. What actually is a necessity? Should I buy all the ingredients to make shampoo or should I just buy shampoo?

Make the bread, buy the butter is a book often recommended to answer this particular question, though i assume the answer might vary between economies; e.g. in a more agricultural setting, someone might make both the bread or the butter; on the other hand, in a country where bread is a staple on the level of rice in asia, it might make sense to buy both the bread and the butter -- or buy the bread and switch to various vegetable cooking oils and away from animal products

[jacob]

I think you'll find the answer in the first sentence of Walden: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach..." and thus likewise, "I'm doing a buy nothing year because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential items of life, and see if I could not learn how much stuff I used to buy..."

What constitutes a BNY is really the attitude. Why are you doing it? Rules and definitions are just there to assist. They're not there to define a game to win. If the challenge is driven by attitude, one is also far more likely to stay the course after the year is done and make it a lifetime change. If it's seen as a challenge, it might very well end after a year. Worst case then is having $20000 in savings and blowing them on a new car.

Here's an example of an attitude driven approach. https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/ ... othing-day Note she mentions bills and food but later that clearly not all food is allowed. If this was about rules, the clever human mind would quickly start to find workarounds to find rewards. E.g. "I can't buy wine. Ahhh... but I did allow myself to DIY, so Imma spend $400 on wine making equipment". I think that misses the point.

The shampoo question boils down to washing your hair. What is essential to washing your hair? Maybe nothing or maybe that shampoo you're already using or maybe a generic one. What is a luxury? Probably all those other 5 hair products in the medicine cabinet. (I'm just guessing here.)

[7Wannabe5]

I've been thinking that a combination (or compromise?) between "buy nothing" and/or "locavore" challenges might be "buy nothing made/offered by a multi-national corporation or similar." Might be an easier sell to humans who are more social and/or idealistic than the average forum member here. For example, my daughter gave me a hand-knitted woolen headband and a mushroom growing kit for Christmas, both of which she purchased from friends who live nearby who were making and selling them.

[Frita]

And another question is “Could I use less?” For example using Jacob’s shampoo example, I have waist-long hair that I typically pull back and braid due to our windy area. As a kid with the same hairstyle we washed our hair weekly, but then I started to wash it daily (or more) when I swam competitively. That habit stuck until I did some experimentation.

Turns out about weekly is fine. Also, I realized how much product is enough: nickel-sized dollops with the shampoo mostly on my scalp and conditioner mostly on the ends. (BTW My spouse trims my hair, though I can do it too. He has cut his own hair for 25+ years. Our kids have never had a “professional” haircut.) The result is also reduced water and energy usage, more time as I air dry my hair, and less exposure to gossip/drama and marketing as there are no beauty shop.

[Hristo Botev]

There's a relatively popular extended Lenten program among Catholics, aimed principally at the "Catholic-Bro" or "OrthoBro" types, called "Exodus 90" ("90" cuz its 90 days instead of the roughly 40 days of Lent--cuz, you know, it's EXTREME) (https://exodus90.com/how-it-works/). Like a BNY it's intended to be a sort of "reset," which is a lot of what Lent is about as well. I mention it because a sort of "buy nothing" rule is one of the ascetic practices that are part of Exodus 90, with the rule specifically being "abstain from non-essential material purchases." That may be a good framework to work within, methinks. There will of course be questions about what is or is not "essential" and "material," of course, but meditating (or praying) on that question is part of the exercise.

[7Wannabe5]

The opposite of what I am suggesting above would be an approximately 1 jacob per year lifestyle achieved by sharing low-rent, McApartment complex housing with a roommate, taking the city bus and occasional Uber, and only shopping at the Dollar Tree. You'd likely be at or near Do No Harm level ecologically, but your resilience would be weak, and your quality of life would not be such that others would envy/strive to emulate.

[Ego]

I think you'll find the answer in the first sentence of Walden: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach..." and thus likewise, "I'm doing a buy nothing year because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential items of life, and see if I could not learn how much stuff I used to buy..."

This is why I lean toward an 80/20 distribution of taking action and doing things versus thinking and talking about the theory behind what I intend to do someday.

It is easy to become so distracted by the strategies, rules, vocabulary and different perspectives of various experts that one never actually accomplishes anything other than accumulating a headful of ideas.

I am not doing a buy nothing year. If I were I would just start buying nothing, learn from the pain points, adjust and iterate.

There, I spent my 20% for the day. Now I am going to blend up a few weeks of green smoothies.

[jacob]

This is why I lean toward an 80/20 distribution of taking action and doing things versus thinking and talking about the theory behind what I intend to do someday.

I lean 20/80 for the same reason. To invert, "it is easy to become so distracted by shiny objects and present activities that one never actually discovers any greater purpose than turning one's experiences into a bunch of memories".

It's a temperamental thing.

[Frita]

The opposite of what I am suggesting above would be an approximately 1 jacob per year lifestyle achieved by sharing low-rent, McApartment complex housing with a roommate, taking the city bus and occasional Uber, and only shopping at the Dollar Tree. You'd likely be at or near Do No Harm level ecologically, but your resilience would be weak, and your quality of life would not be such that others would envy/strive to emulate.

Whoa, this does sound like hell on earth! I observe this with some never leaving people here but they tend to cycle for transportation. My teen works with a 60-odd year old like this. He also frequents a college bar near our house that has a pretty sweet happy hour he can enjoy with his shift-earned restaurant meal.

I wonder if the 20- to 30-something never leavers realize their fate and will shift or just continue along. It could be (and is) interesting to observe.

[7Wannabe5]

@Frita:

Yes, and there is sort of a moral dilemna represented here because encouraging somebody hard-locked into this lifestyle to move towards improved resilience, robustness, and quality-of-life will frequently tend towards raising their spending and lowering overall population level sustainability. IOW, it might often be the case that somebody has to get to something like the skill-set and optionality provided by "making $50,000 per year, but only saving 20%" before they can successfully begin to move up ERE Wheaton Levels. IOW, a period of life in which earn/burn is clearly at ecologically unsustainable level might be prerequisite for many people, because this is the price/process of Adulting 101 in realms such as the U.S. IOW, the desire to earn is initially motivated by the desire to spend, but a certain level of earnings achieved (or equivalent such as the $$/year plus privileges/benefits/access somebody working in academic or non-profit sector would acquire) may be if not necessary, at least very well-correlated, with degree of optionality required to create lifestyle that is sustainable, resilient, reasonably robust, and high-quality.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@7W5 - That is one thing about low-spend that haunts me. I know multiple people who are 30-50 years old who have never left their parents house and do nothing but play video games and watch television. Obviously that's the exact opposite of ERE, but it nevertheless remains true that their lack of spending and lack of contributing to population growth puts them at a better level of Do No Harm than someone like me who is spending at about standard FIRE levels.

I believe in both cases here, either the NEET or the Middle Aged Dollar Tree Aficionado, are suffering from the fact they've essentially trapped themselves in that situation. The lack of optionality creates stagnation, which is why being highly skilled and connected (in the form of continued FTE or a robust set of alternative and interesting hobbies or alternative lifestyle opportunities) is important.

Maybe this is just where I'm at in my life now, but I increasingly think my goal at least is to create interesting experiences. Once you reach Peak Consumer, you realize there are interesting experiences to be had outside of spending money, but the fact I have a graduate degree and 10 years of work experience makes it easier for me to reach said interesting experiences because I have enough "normie credit" to navigate the social world and convince people to let touch their expensive business equipment. Someone who fails to launch or goes too frugal too fast might miss out on the opportunity to build that skill.

[Ego]

That is one thing about low-spend that haunts me. I know multiple people who are 30-50 years old who have never left their parents house and do nothing but play video games and watch television.

I increasingly think my goal at least is to create interesting experiences.

This!

Brains in vats consume almost nothing. A great thing if the ultimate priority is low consumption. Playing with ideas - like playing video games - distracts from the consumer sea in which we swim and accomplishes this extremely low consumption.

But there is SO much more to life than that.

[jacob]

Yes, and there is sort of a moral dilemna represented here because encouraging somebody hard-locked into this lifestyle to move towards improved resilience, robustness, and quality-of-life will frequently tend towards raising their spending and lowering overall population level sustainability. IOW, it might often be the case that somebody has to get to something like the skill-set and optionality provided by "making $50,000 per year, but only saving 20%" before they can successfully begin to move up ERE Wheaton Levels. IOW, a period of life in which earn/burn is clearly at ecologically unsustainable level might be prerequisite for many people, because this is the price/process of Adulting 101 in realms such as the U.S. IOW, the desire to earn is initially motivated by the desire to spend, but a certain level of earnings achieved (or equivalent such as the $$/year plus privileges/benefits/access somebody working in academic or non-profit sector would acquire) may be if not necessary, at least very well-correlated, with degree of optionality required to create lifestyle that is sustainable, resilient, reasonably robust, and high-quality.

Reaching diminishing returns on the hedonist scale may be a sufficient condition, but I'm not sure it's required.

Anecdotally speaking, I got my first job at age 12 earning enough money to basically buy all the toys I wanted instead of relying on allowances and presents to get my consumer fix. After about 10 years, I was beginning to realize that the dopamine fix of purchasing something new only lasted a couple of months until I needed to buy another "toy". The marginal return of cumulative purchases had reached near zero. Perhaps most people don't start this learning curve until after college (from 23 to 33) at which point, the toys have become much more expensive and also available on credit thus putting people on the hook for a lifetime addiction. Point being, it didn't cost me 1 JAFI because it is much cheaper to learn this as a teenager than as an adult.

Likewise, I traveled a lot in my late teens and twenties. Again, traveling and "seeing things" eventually reached diminishing returns where all airports, cities, and sights began to look much the same. What's the point of going to a new place when it's just a variation of all the other places. Again, it was a lot cheaper to do that at age 25 than it is at age 55 when the tolerance for lack of creature comforts in much lower.

I don't think one needs to reach a spending level of $50k per year to learn these lessons. It's more that most people start that learning curve rather late. And that for the most part they lock-in at the FTE-salary spending level rather than the part-time student wage spending level. If not as NEETs then a 9-5 employees with a mortgage working at The Office filing TPS reports. The NEETs may lack the connections or skills. The FTE people lack the risk-tolerance and agreement to let themselves go from everything/everyone they've worked so hard to bind themselves to. These are just two different kinds of comfort zones.

It is somewhat ironic that a thread about BNY displays many of typical consumer-withdrawal signs of someone going through the first 3 months the challenge: "Framing non-spending as a sacrifice (negative copying). Arguing why it's impossible to really liiiiive without spending. That surely there are no alternatives and therefore some minimum of spending is required rather than sufficient."

[Lemur]

Regarding the thinking vs doing distribution, I certainly feel that the former is worthy of one's time and not a waste of time.

"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal

Nietzsche, Rousseau, Thoreau, even Abraham Lincoln - all known for their long walks in solitude.

I've gained much by just walking, thinking, and reading...diminishing returns only seem to occur with overspecialization in a subject. Moral reasoning and ethical thinking seems to be a never ending thought process.

Yeah must be a temperament thing.

I'll agree with Jacob that does not need to reach spending levels to grok BNY. But I do think some sort of experience is required. In this case, Ego's advice of "Just do it" might be the minimum necessary but maybe the "getting it out of your system via spending" is one such experience. Another experience I attest to was when I spent 6 months in Afghanistan living in a tent when I was in the military. There was no place to spend money. Shelter, food, and water were provided while we worked 12-16 hours a day. Just work, sleep, eat. Very system like....every paycheck was invested because there was nothing to buy. It does make one see how possible it is to live off very little and that experience stuck with me. Most cherished memories was the banter with my friends who I miss sometimes. Nothing that can't be bought.

Oh but I do recall now that a large chunk of us would save up all our money and then blow all of it on a Motorcycle or a Mustang upon return to our duty stations. That stereotype rings true. Not me thankfully but when I think about this ....... just dumb. So I can't explain that one.

Other experiences one can try to fill in the gap:

1.) Go on one of those meditation retreats?
2.) Go camping in the woods for 2 weeks bringing minimum things?
3.) Put $50 in your wallet and see how long you can make it last.

Charity was provided by support the troop related foundations. Whoever hooked us with Rip-it energy drinks and candies were my heroes at the time lol.

[jacob]

Oh but I do recall now that a large chunk of us would save up all our money and then blow all of it on a Motorcycle or a Mustang upon return to our duty stations. That stereotype rings true. Not me thankfully but when I think about this ....... just dumb. So I can't explain that one.

I think I can because that was basically the depth of my economic (and financial) understanding as a teenager. Being 12-18 yo and living at home not having any costs of living, nor any credit, basically, eat/sleep/school, money was saved until it reached critical mass and then dumped on new computer, harddrive, telescope, camera, ... and then the process started all over again. Fundamentally the same idea just on a smaller scale. I did not know investing and I didn't even know much about it. I sometimes think back on how I could have started investing in 1987 and joined most of the decadal run-up ... but I didn't start until 2004 when I realized that I could use money to make money instead of working for it. TBH, I think even many self-declared investors don't see it that way but rather as a kind of savings account with a better interest rate. The purpose of that money is still to spend it rather than make more of it or provide an money-based income. It's a conceptional difference rather than a material difference but it matters a great deal in terms of how one goes about it.

[7Wannabe5]

@Ego:

I think it's important to not make this introvert vs. extrovert or anything to do with any specific temperamental tendency. For instance, for somebody who is primarily Ne (explorer), like me, the "degenerate" very low spend life-style very few would care to emulate would be something like 81 year old guy living in his van hitting on affluent old women for occasional comforts, and constantly feeling "trapped" or Classic Hobo. OTOH, my secondary function of Ti (analyst) would devolve to some kind of "brain in a vat" engaged in nothing but mental masturbation type non-enviable low spend lifestyle. My tertiary Fe (socia harmony)function would slump to some kind of pathetic martyrdom where I am working 60 hours/week for $12,000/year as a social worker in Appalachia and compensating for all the emotion I have to process by eating WAAAAAAY too much pastry*. etc. etc.

Reaching diminishing returns on the hedonist scale may be a sufficient condition, but I'm not sure it's required.

I wasn't thinking about diminished returns on hedonic as much as achievement of a certain degree of optionality in varying forms of capital. For instance, accumulating a certain amount of financial capital gives you optionality in terms of rent vs. buy. Accumulating a certain amount of intellectual capital gives you optionality in terms of graduate school vs. entrepreneurial endeavor. Accumulating a certain amount of sexual capital gives you optionality in terms of marriage vs. dating. However, there is always a certain initial price of "education or experience" that must be paid in order to get to the level of achieving greater optionality. I agree that money is not strictly necessary, but the fewer forms of capital you have acquired (and/or the more you have lost/depleted) to the level of optionality, the more difficult it will be to creatively bootstrap.

The lack of optionality creates stagnation

And it is also true that stagnation creates a lack of optionality, but what "stagnation" and/or "degeneracy/devolution" looks like is going to vary according to temperament/context/perspective etc.

ETA: *Took me a minute, but my 4th function (Si-memory) would be slowly starving or freezing to death by trying to survive solely on the basis of bartering items I handcrafted from nature for local Farmer's Market tokens. My 5th and 6th functions would be (Ni) and (Te), and, therefore, the Enneagram 5 I wannabe, but have some difficulty accessing, but low functioning/low spend version would be doing something non-lucrative and not widely aspirational like solving chess puzzles alone in a bare garret. My 7th function Fi would probably be classic starving substance-abusing artist. And my 8th function Se would be guy who lifts weights on the beach, and that's pretty much all he does.

[kane]

There's also another angle to the things mentioned here; I often fall to this ERE-wannabe-over-optimization-loop where I know that there's probably Better Way To Do Something(tm) (e.g. acquiring new skill) and I procrastinate buying some tool(s) (buying new is not in the cards (or is it?)... buying used means researching the topic, because in case skill acquiring fails [it often does in my case] I would like to be able to resell this stuff... or maybe just buy something cheap and see what happens, if the plan fails just give it to someone for free and the costs go to 'Wasted' category? OTOH, buying something cheap means that it could make this skill-acquiring-mountain steeper, making fail scenario more likely...) and there's also an elephant in the room: does it break my BNY? (Framing problem that I guess this thread is about).

So I cannot rationalize something consumer-style ('I will just buy whatever, I can afford it anyways'), but I'm banging my head into some kind of a Wheaton wall (OMG BNY broken, so much reading to do before doing something, I'm sure there's a better way to approach this etc.)

I wonder if there's some kind of a middle-ground between Jacob and Ego? "Waste" category in the budget? but then there's threshold setting...

[jacob]

But I do think some sort of experience is required. In this case, Ego's advice of "Just do it" might be the minimum necessary but maybe the "getting it out of your system via spending" is one such experience.

Just commenting a bit more ...

The idea with BNY is that experience is gained during the year in a sink or swim fashion. This is why the experience usually has the same trajectory for [almost] everyone who have tried the original proscription and just gone for it. There's really not much one can do to prepare in advance beyond perhaps answering the question as to why one wants to do it. (In my case, I did it a few years before BNY became a branded thing.)

Months 0--3: "Woe is me. Such a sacrifice! Wah wah wah. I can't do this anymore. I can't do that anymore either. I can't do anything. I don't know if I can make it through this."
Months 4--6: "I found a couple of substitutes that turned out to be free. It was cool to learn that this option existed."
Months 7--9: "Life is awesome. I never knew this world existed. Not only have I found many more free solutions. I'm also doing something new and exciting [these months]"
Months 10-12?: "I think I have this dialed in. I don't miss shopping at all. In fact, I don't think I'll go back to my old spending ways. Also, look at my savings account!"

However, it also depends on how much energy one puts into it. I have seen some exceptions where the author treated it as a book project or a year long assignment with a fixed termination day. If the entry attitude is one of "just doing my time" much less is learned and the experience will be closer to that of months 0-6 but stretched out over a year. The paradigm shift whether people switch from thinking about freedom-from [having to find an alternative to buying] to freedom-to [pursue all these other things that money can't buy] happens around the 8 month mark or so.

[Humanofearth]

A buy nothing year is a year without any impulse or luxury purchases. It's about the intent to do your best to minimize expenses to the radical degree while still maintaining your health (physical, mental, social, etc).

I did several years of monk mode expenses and it changed me. I now see others buying lambos and rolexes even if it's easy to get, I don't want it. I literally don't see a point as it doesn't match me. I have nice clothes, that cost $15-20 a piece mostly, not that much. I bought an apple watch and sold it less than 6 months later as I couldn't stand it, I prefered my trekking watch. Considered a new bike, nah. I can't even think of what to buy if it's not for the purpose of status or health, my life feels so good.

It'd be stressful to consider how delicate I'd have to be with status goods since I can be brutish with possessions. On the other side, I buy quite expensive food and rarely glance twice at the cost or at the cost of going out. The concern for me now is that I'm upgrading many parts of my life and have some worry about boring my mates, even though it's obvious that my progress and self-trust in health and working is more valued than flashing.

[Myakka]

“Who is going to wash all of the disgusting snot rags produced by a herd of 5 year olds if Kleenex is not provided?”

I am not supposing this to be an effective approach for 5 year olds -- my personal wisdom regarding that species of human being rather thin. BUT in my reading of old books -- this particular one which I am now referencing obliquely being Hans Christian Andderson's Fairy Tales -- the one I have being one that claims to be a much more faithful translation into English than is commonly met with -- there is a tale in which an old tin soldier is found on the ground and the first step that the mother or wife takes in restoring from being covered in rust is to pick up a leaf from the ground and do the best she can to rub as much off with that before using her handkerchief to do the finishing off part. (It would be better if I remembered the NAME of this tale -- but I don't have that part in my long term memory.)

This same principle with an appropriately soft leaf would work with snot -- the leaf takes the bulk and the finishing touches are done with the snot rag. The snotty leaf goes in the compost.