10 Things I Stopped Buying (Minimalism + Saving Money)

so in today's video I'm going to share some of the items that I stopped buying or paying for and there's a number of reasons for this primarily being for financial purposes I found that we spend so much money on these items that we don't necessarily need or that add more stress to our lives that we can end up cutting getting rid of it's going to free up a lot more cash in your life so this is what I've personally done and you may find some interest in this as well to really cut back on these expenses to free up cash that you can then use on vacation you can use this cash to invest for your retirement but I think it's great to have some excess money left over at the end of the month and that's really our goal on this channel so one of the first things that I kind of stopped buying altogether is sale items so when it comes to sales when you're buying items you want to be very very careful of this because I find that a lot of my friends for example will end up spending $400 on a shopping trip and they'll say actually it used to be $1,200 I saved $800 because I got these things on crazy sales it was 60% off and I got such a great deal for only $400 but then my thought process is more so you really didn't save $800 you you spent 400 you have $400 less in your bank account today than you had yesterday so that's really how I view it and you want to just kind of think about this going forward that just because something's on sale doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to save money on this item so I try my best to not be affected by sales when I want something when I need to buy something I'll just go and buy it and I won't really try to be affected too much by sales now there's obviously times where sales can make sense where it's coming up on winter and there's summer items that are on sale or vice versa if it's winter and you want to buy summer items I could just make more sense you could save more money but we're talking about the 70% off carpet blowout sale or the mattress blowout sale the ones that happen all the time same for cars as well it's really kind of my ideas that you're gonna pay market price for most items so I just don't bother trying to get as many sales as some other people might do and this actually goes for couponing as well I've seen people use coop and end up spending twice as much money as somebody who doesn't use coupons because they're buying items that they just have no use for or no need for but they think that they need to buy free to get one free and the end up they're spending so much more money so just keep that in mind as you go forward with buying items in the future and the psychology of purchasing things and how that really affects you another thing that I stopped buying almost all together is any type of drinks whether it be sugary drinks even a lot of alcohol I don't really buy it just kills brain cells but the average American consumes over 44 gallons of soda per year and that explains a lot of the health problems that we have in America but it's really not only a financial expense it's going to cost you a lot of money buying sugary drinks buying soda even fruit juice in a lot of cases or bottled water don't even get me started on that but there are all things that you just don't really need to pay for I just drink tap water i filter it through a Brita filter or you can even get a more fancy filter if you'd like for 30 dollars and you're good for quite some time by just drinking water I don't really need anything else and this isn't really actually for really financial reasons it's more so just because most drinks and fluids that you put in your body that aren't water they're not going to be very healthy for you in a lot of cases they're loaded with sugar and it's just not good for you so that's what I've done and it really has saved me a lot of money and probably made me a little bit healthier now maybe you saw my last video I'm still not a great cook I'm getting better I put some butter on my eggs today so that's probably better that it ain't stick to the pan it's something else that I stopped buying almost all together this one was really difficult for myself it was actually books so I stopped buying as many books I used to be a book buying addict you know some people are drug addicts I was a book buying addict I would buy multiple books per week I would read at least one of those per week but then the other ones would just kind of pile up and I didn't have seven bookshelves but I had quite a bit of bookshelves I've had hundreds of books what I started doing now is I still read a lot I think reading is amazing and I think it's a great financial investment as well to gain some knowledge increase your human capital it's something that people can't really take away you can take somebody's money you can rob somebody but it's difficult to take away people's knowledge that they have in their brains so I love buying books but now what I do is when I buy a book I'll read it and I find that once I read a book I'm probably not gonna read it for quite some time again maybe I'll read it a few years later but what I do now is I just give them away usually to friends family I love just giving books away to people because I think it's just a great kind of not a gift but just you know we talk about something I say if you're looking for a good book I have some that I just read you can have them and I don't want them back because I found it really did create a lot of clutter so even when I moved into this apartment I didn't really move in with any books I usually have maybe five or six books on hand that I'll read over the span of a month or a month and a half and then I'll just give them away you can also go to your free local library and get them or you can listen to audiobooks on audible.com I'll leave the link down for that in the description I guess it's a good plug there to get two free audiobooks if you're interested using Amazon audible and I think it's a great way to just consume content passively throughout your day on your commute to work by just listening to Amazon audible so links down in the description for that one something else that I stopped doing it's actually over buying food so this is an interesting topic because we talk too much about food on this channel we talked about why it's important to make your own food instead of going out at restaurants to eat but at the same time you want to be careful that you're not spending too much money on food and I find that this is actually kind of a problem for some people where they'll go and they'll go to say Costco or Sam's Club or BJ's or some of these other wholesale stores and they'll spend so much money on food and then this food goes bad after a week they buy four loaves of bread which actually I bought three loaves of bread I go through a lot of bread but I eat that bread every week but some people will you know buy say eggs or they'll buy it too much meat and then they won't use it or they forget to freeze it it sits in there in the fridge for a couple of weeks and then it goes bad so make sure that there's a balance there that you're buying in bulk to save money but at the same time not buying too much bulk where the food goes bad and you can't eat seven heads of lettuce within the next couple of days and so you have to throw them out creates a lot of waste financially but also for the environment sustainability in general it's just not very to do now the next one here I know people are gonna disagree with this and it's not something that really works for everybody but it's something that I've been able to do and that's by actually cutting down transportation costs quite a bit by actually not having a car and I didn't think this was possible for some time because I've always had a car but it works for me I'm 21 so I don't have kids to to take care of I don't have to drive an hour to work and I live in a relatively urban area so if you look at the most expensive things in our lives its housing then its transportation cost which is about eight thousand dollars per year then it's food costs so if you're really trying to cut that quite a bit see if you can find a way to not have a car and like I said I really didn't think it was possible for me because I thought you know what about that one time that I have to drive to the airport or I have to drive an hour to go to a doctor's appointment somewhere and a different stay for some weird reason and I found that I just actually just don't really need one I take uber from time to time but even with that I might spend $50 a month on uber for the random trips where I need a car and it's still saving me a lot of money because when you have a car you're not just paying for that car payment but you're paying for insurance which could be $1,000 per year you're paying for wear and tear you're paying for maintenance there are so many costs like I said it's over $8,000 per year in transportation that we pay whereas I personally probably pay a little bit over $100 per month in all of my transportation costs I really don't pay a lot for that and it frees up so much cash in my personal budget for myself so just just explore it a little bit and see if it's possible I know it's not possible for most people but for those people out there who might not need a car but they have three then really kind of think about that and look into how much you're actually paying for cars another thing that I actually don't really spend a lot of money on and actually I don't buy whatsoever is extended warranties now I wouldn't go as far to say that these are a total scam but extended warranties there's actually been Studies on this but it shows that people generally it's not going to be worth it if you're at Best Buy and you're buying a laptop and they say you want to get a year extended warranty for an extra $200 a lot of people say yes and I found that first of all if I say yes to an extended warranty I can't remember the last time that three years later when an item breaks I remember the warranty on that item for example this camera I think I actually did get a warranty on it if it breaks I have no idea where that warranty came from I'm not gonna remember even where I bought it from I barely ate remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday right or actually even this morning I don't remember what I ate this morning for breakfast I don't so there's no way that I'm gonna remember where I got this extended warranty from $400 for this camera when it actually breaks so that's why I just don't get them I think it's kind of just a waste of money now there's some people maybe they're really really diligent about it for example my cousin he will buy something get a five-year warranty on it in literally four years and two hundred seventy two days later he remembers when that item breaks that he has this warranty from this one company and it worked for him and he gets his money back and it's pretty cool actually but I'm not gonna remember it I'm really not so I don't pay for warranties and if it breaks I'll just buy a new one that's just how I work and I think it's better off for myself another thing that I really don't pay a lot of money for is actually hotels now this is a personal preference but I found that most American families they might go on vacation they say they spend $3,000 on a week-long trip to the Bahamas maybe Cancun Aruba and and they go on these vacations at all-inclusive resorts where they're paying $400 a night for a hotel room that's not really my cup of tea what I found and this is kind of actually really by accident is when I started traveling I found that I could stretch say $3,000 I could stretch that for months traveling by being kind of savvy about how you do it whether it comes to buying plane tickets being smart about where you're traveling to and hotels I don't stay in hotels Airbnb czar generally cheaper you can stay with friends as well just make friends around the world it's a lot easier than what I thought it would be but also staying in hostels now this isn't for everybody I probably said that a couple times about this video that some of these things they're very much personal choices but I ended up staying in hostels when I travel especially when I'm solo traveling going to Japan a couple of weeks I don't know where I'm staying I'll probably stay in the hospital because then I can meet other people explore the city with other people instead of by myself and it's like 20 dollars a night so we kind of just works out it's a win-win-win all around the board when it comes to traveling and staying in places that are not $400 a night hotels where you're not meeting people you're not experiencing the culture but you're just kind of cooped up in a hotel or resort and it's just something that I really really don't like so even I would go as far to say that if I had tens of millions of dollars in the future I'd probably still stay in hospitals because I think that they're fun you meet a lot of new people and I just think it's a great experience and I've met so many new people and find myself and just places that I would have never otherwise have done if I hadn't stayed in hostels and met new people so if you're young you're in your 20s or 30s I would just consider doing it now I can't condone couchsurfing I don't want people to die get killed and I probably shouldn't condone hitchhiking as well on this channel because I don't want anybody to die from that but though there's some real ways to kind of have some cool life experiences let's just move on to the next one here now kind of sticking with the travel thing here because I do quite a bit of traveling I've been on like 30-some flights this year I love traveling and I get a lot more bang for my buck when I kind of stretch this money out but I actually don't like buying souvenirs when I travel and I found that people will say they go to Panama and they'll end up buying like bumper stickers and magnets for their fridge and all kinds of different little trinkets that you can get a gift shops around the world wherever you travel I just found that I don't need these they add up quite a bit if I do buy souvenirs it's not for myself I'll buy something really cool and say a different country and then I'll just give it to one of my friends or I'll give it to my mom or a family member instead of keeping it for myself because it really does add up especially if you travel quite a bit just take some pictures and pictures do it for me I don't need time a souvenir from every single country that I've been to I'll end up with crates of just stuff that it's gonna add add up quite a bit and I'm planning to hold onto it forever for that's my life and that's how you end up with a lot of clutter and end up needing some storage space somewhere because you just have to stuff now one of the other things that I wanted to really bring up here something that I think people should really really be careful about is investing in things that you don't really understand so this doesn't really go with the things that I stopped buying but when I stopped putting my money is investments that I do not understand so a great example of this would be something like cryptocurrency I'm not an expert with cryptocurrency and I remember the whole Bitcoin craze in late 2017 early 2018 I didn't really understand it people told me I was a fool for not putting all my money in Bitcoin they just threw thirty thousand dollars in it maybe it worked out for some of them maybe it didn't for others but I didn't understand it well enough so I didn't want to invest into it that's kind of my philosophy the biggest tip that I could have here for anybody thinking about their investments their financial future is to just make sure that you understand what you're actually putting your money into if you have a financial advisor and they're putting money into investments or mutual funds or 401ks Roth IRAs retirement accounts whatever it is make sure that you understand this just take an hour take a day and sit down and say what am i putting my money into if it's in a bank account what kind of protections do I have with that if I'm putting it into mutual funds what's in that mutual fund how does that mutual fund actually work make sure that you understand that because this is when people really get into trouble that could be a massive bubble and nobody sees it coming because they just blindly invest money so make sure that you do your due diligence on that and you're gonna feel so much better when you actually know where your money's going and we have plenty of videos on that when it comes to personal finance and investing and being aware of what it is that you're actually investing into so I also don't pay for name-brand drugs if you look into FDA regulations they're very strict about medicine and drugs and which ones are being sold over-the-counter and the different guidelines for that so this probably doesn't even save me much money it's probably literally like a couple of dollars but it's still something that does add up paying for the name-brand drugs versus the off-brand store brand and that really goes for anything even food as well paying for name-brand items sometimes they're literally made in the same Factory but they just slap a different label on it and can charge you 25% more by having a brand that you recognize so just paying for the things that are it's gonna save you a lot of money over your over your lifetime and something that's worth it for me so hopefully you found some value in this video like I said most of these are for financial reasons or just to cut back on things that I'm buying or paying for in my life frees up a lot of cash and it makes me happier so if you found any value in this video make sure you drop a like subscribe if you haven't done so already I'll bring you out lots of new videos related to these topics so thanks for all the support on the channel I really do appreciate it and I'll see everybody next time

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 1,224,442

Rating: 4.8783493 out of 5

Keywords: bank accounts, financial freedom, financial tips, how to save money, how to save money fast, manage money, money, money management, money saving tips, nate obrien, personal finance, save money, save money 2019, saving money, spend money, ways to save money, things I stopped buying, minimalist living, what i stopped buying, stopped buying

Id: wS3fkoBkBVA

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019