The ultimate challenge: Buy nothing new for a year
Posted
Feb 05 2008, 09:46 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
We've applauded personal-finance bloggers who have sworn off clothes shopping for a month or a year. Those goals are baby steps compared with the challenge of not buying anything new for an entire year.
Ryan Healy called readers' attention to this idea in a recent post at Debt Reduction. (Here's a little link love: He read about it in a post at The Blog of Tim Ferriss.) It's the brainchild of 10 San Francisco friends who are concerned about consumerism and its damage to the planet. The group called itself The Compact and pledged to buy only used stuff for a year, with the exception of toiletries, medicine and food.
Ryan says that pledge could also do wonders for your financial security and problem-solving skills. "Imagine how much you would save -- and how much more creative you would become -- if you committed to not buy anything new for one year," he writes. "More importantly, imagine how much progress you could make on debt reduction."
This concept could come in handy. In a separate post, Ryan notes that the job market is shrinking, and that 15 members of the church he attends lost their jobs in the last week.
