An Introduction to My Low Buy Year 2019

Hello, everyone. I hope you had a great weekend! If you are new to this blog, welcome and thank you for stopping by! For you who were already here since before, you might have known from my recent posts that I started doing a project called ‘low-buy year 2019’. In today’s post, I thought I would share with you the reasons why I started a low-buy year and the rules I’ve been setting up for myself so this could be a successful project.

But before that, let me announce that I’ve uploaded my first Youtube video about my first shopping experience on Colourpop website *yeaay* I had an issue at that time but their customer service handled it pretty fast. If you want to know what my issue was and how they resolved it, please kindly check on this video!

Ok, without further ado, let’s get started!

My Reasons

I have been into makeup, skin care, and beauty products since around 2014, if I’m not mistaken. It’s all started when I was still living in Japan. As a country that have four seasons, each season in Japan has a very distinctive weather characteristic that made a girl like me, who came from a tropical country that has relatively similar weather condition throughout the year, struggled. My skin needs kept changing according to the season and the skin care products I had been using since before I left for Japan was no longer effective. Therefore at that time I started learning more about beauty products.

At the same time, I sometimes had to attend or perform in an event where I must wear makeup, for example a cultural exchange event. I was tired of having to always ask my friend to help me do my makeup, so I started improving my makeup skill by watching tutorials from Youtube. And by doing that, I also started building my makeup collection.

As someone who watch many beauty related channels, I can’t lie that I sometimes buy things just because it was recommended by beauty gurus I watch, not because I need them. Rather than having only one product per makeup item, recently I like having option or alternative. Without me realizing it, my makeup collection has grew beyond ‘normal’. I have too many makeup products for an average person who don’t make Youtube videos about makeup. And I don’t think it is ok.

Besides subscribing to beauty gurus channels, I also follow makeup brands’ official social media account to be updated about their new launches and promotions. These brands’ marketing teams really know how to make people keep buying their stuffs. They make different promos on different days so that people will buy something because of temptation of sales or deals. And not only once or twice, I often fell into this ‘trap’. If you’ve read my post before this, you knew my struggle already.

Now that I have this ‘many’ makeup products, I really REALLY want to finish up all the stuffs I have before they gone bad. Therefore, I must stop buying new stuffs until I use up all of my current possessions.

The next reason is none other than, money. Yes, I want to NEED to save more money because of my life future planning.

And lastly, I want to work hard to get what I want before actually getting it. And this is related to the rules I’ve set for myself regarding this project, which I will be sharing on the next section below.

My Rules

I watched several other Youtubers who will be doing a no-buy or low-buy year this year, and everyone has different rules. As for me, these rules below are the most suitable for my condition so that I could resolve my concerns that I mentioned on ‘My Reasons’ above.

And for those who don’t know the difference between no-buy and low-buy year, basically no-buy is when the subject will NOT buy anything except replacement or refill for one year, while low-buy is when the subject LIMIT their purchase in one year according their own rules. In this case, what I will do is the latter.

So, here are my low-buy year rules:

1. I will NOT buy anything from January 1st until May 31st except for replacement or refill. And anything here means EVERYTHING, not only beauty products, but also clothing, book, accessories, bag, shoes, toiletries, collectible items, etc.
2. I MAY buy things on the month of June with maximum budget 100 USD on everything. It means 100 USD for makeup, skin care, clothing, etc all together, NOT 100 USD for each type of things. You might think 100 USD is a small amount of money for everything, but it is quite a lot of money here in Indonesia.
3. If my purchase on June doesn’t reach the maximum budget, I will carry the rest of it to the next shopping schedule.
4. I will repeat the same drill from July 1st until November 30th, and I may buy things again on December, with the same maximum budget, which is 100 USD, plus (if any) the leftover budget from June.
5. Exception: my mom will probably goes to Europe for a vacation in the spring. If she goes according to her plan, I might ask her to help me buy a bag that I really want which is quite expensive here in Indonesia because of the shipping and taxes. I might also ask her to help me buy some European beauty products that I can’t get here, with a limit of 5 items, and I will count 1 set as 1 item.

If you are wondering, why I have an exception, that is because vacationing to Europe is not something that me and my family can get easily, because of distance, time, and money limitations. I’ve never been to Europe, neither did my mom. If she is able to go this time, this will probably be her one and only chance (except if we won a lottery XD). This could also be my one of a kind chance to be able to buy something from across the continent with near original price. That’s why I have this one exception.

I also mentioned on the previous section that I want to work hard to get want I before getting it. Based on my rules, I will get to shop again after 5 months without shopping and with maximum budget 100 USD, which means I will have to save 20 USD per month. You may say, why don’t just spend only 20 USD per month instead of holding it for 5 months before spending it? However, I think it’s a completely different thing. By saving my money first before spending it, I will have a sense of working hard to save money. And also, I can really consider what I need and buy them after 5 months of consideration. If I spend 20 USD per month, I will buy stuffs that month just because of temporary desire, not because I really need it. I hope it makes sense.

Ok, I think that’s all I wanted to say about my low-buy year 2019. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it can give you inspiration to do similar thing or to set up your no-buy or low-buy year rules.

If you are doing a low-buy or no-buy year this year, what are your rules? How do your rules different from mine? Do you have any exception? Please let me know on the comment section below!

See you next time!