Poverty Sucks

I had an idea today that I should, for the next year of my life, try not to buy anything.

This, of course, is impossible. I need to buy food, and utilities, and gasoline. But I mean discretionary purchases, and to some extent, those "basic needs" are discretionary also. I could probably stand to buy a lot less food, utilities and gasoline and still survive.

I have a spending problem. And I'm not a "big spender". The problem is that I think I spend very little... except that I spend very little on a lot of things.

I'm just so sick of working a job that is slowly sucking out my soul. I feel I need to make it worthwhile in some way. So for the next year, I would like to try to do a few things

1. Save as much money as possible
2. Be annoying frugal
3. See how much money I can make selling crap

"Crap" includes the crap around my house that I don't need, and also stuff like silly drawings and writings.

I won't take any money out of my "crap" account. I'll let it accumulate the entire year and see where it gets me. Maybe I'll make $5, or maybe I'll make $5000.

I need to make the distinction between "want" and "need". Like today I had a doctor's appointment and I had forgotten I needed to drink a bunch of water first. I thought "omigosh I need to stop and buy some bottled waters" which would have cost a few dollars, but instead I made a slight detour to stop at home to grab a Nalgene bottle and filled it up with tapwater. Easy, right? If I could save $5 a day with stuff like that, I could save $1825/year.

Every time I don't buy something I was gonna buy, I should transfer that money into the crap account.

I would be really amazed with myself if I actually stuck with something like this for a whole year.