Ready to do more with less for a while? Time for a spending fast? Did you go overboard during the holidays? It doesn’t have to be on beauty purchases – it could be anything.
- Shopping for family and friends?
- temporarily blacking out on a, “TREAT YOSELF,” spree?
- Maybe you’re just ready to shop your stash rather than adding to it for a while.
- …The reason doesn’t matter.
The result is that you’ve committed to or are considering a No Buy to help you reign it in. Whatever the reason… If that no buy involves something you really enjoy (as they usually do), you will find your willpower tested.
My top tip for how to crush your no buy (or low buy)?
Two Words: Don’t. Shop.
Browsing and sales are the death of resolve. For the duration:
- Don’t casually pop over to your favored beauty retailer’s site.
- Don’t, “just look,” in stores. (Something like the road to Hell being paved in free samples..)
- Toss catalogs you might get in the mail as soon as they arrive rather than keeping them.
- Setup a mailbox filter to route your beauty retailer emails straight to the trash.
and, at the risk of hurting my own traffic…
- If you find yourself heavily influenced by blogs and vlogs, try to identify the ones who influence you the most and avoid their content for the duration. Or, if you tend to be influenced more by video than text, skip YouTube for a bit.
Sounds hard? Try doing it as a beauty blogger without decimating your content creation! I can easily not buy product, but not looking at what’s out there, especially high-hype products, can be challenging.
Other Tips to Help You Crush Your No Buy or Low Buy:
- First, assess your usage replenish your high-consumable items, like mascara, face wash, beforehand.
- Be honest with yourself about your needs.
- Replenish with drugstore versions.
- If you’re worried about the sticking-power of a full-blown ban, define what is, “okay.”
- This falls into a SMART goal. (Maybe drugstore-only is OK. Could skincare be OK? Maybe your cap is $10/mo., etc.)
- Next, establish SMART goals. That’s Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic, and Time-Based. An example:
- S – Purchase no new makeup – or set a limited budget for makeup purchases.
- M – At the end of the duration, did you stick to S? This isn’t complex.
- A – You’re agreeing with yourself, here, to stick to and crush your no buy.
- R – Especially relevant is how realistic the goal is. Is a full ban realistic? Is the duration you set realistic?
- Setting a 365 day full-blown moratorium on non-essential spending isn’t reasonable for many people.
- T – First, start with a reasonable duration, then increase from there.
- If a month sounds too long, start with two weeks and work up.
- Join a support group to help you on the accountability front. There are tons of forums out there – /r/MakeupRehab seems to help a lot of people in this regard.
- If you window-shopped as a way to kill time or, “for fun,” you will consequently have a gaps to fill. Fill that time with another activity; read a book, KonMari your house, indulge in a little Netflix binging whatever.
I hope this helps and am curious as to whether or not you are already employing any of these techniques to help out. Let me know in the comments if you have any helpful tips to add!