I don’t think it’s too soon to make New Year’s Resolutions. To that end, I have decided that my 2025 challenge is: The No-Buy Year.
What’s the No-Buy Challenge?
It actually depends on who you talk to. When I told my younger sibling I wanted to do a No-Buy Year, they said, “Wait, aren’t the no-buy challenges where you buy absolutely nothing? I know people have done it for a week or a month. But a YEAR?”
That’s not actually the variation of this challenge I’m doing.
How I see it, there are two types of no-buy challenges: the first is where you buy nothing. Not even food. People prepare for this challenge by buying in bulk beforehand. These types of challenges are for short-term windows, usually a week or a month.
I’m actually doing a different variant, one I found out about through The Financial Diet. In this variation of the No-Buy challenge, you don’t buy anything UNLESS you run out of it. So things like shampoo, soap, food, and toilet paper are exempt.
Why Do a No-Buy Challenge?
Whether you do the short-term or the long-term variation, there are a lot of reasons to do this challenge. Here are my own reasons for doing it.
1 – Fuck the Billionaires, That’s Why.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can go fuck themselves. I’m not giving them my money if I can avoid it. Even the billionaire who ran Patagonia is not exempt – he just forfeited ownership of the company because he didn’t want to pay taxes. Adam Conover has a whole video breaking this down.
I am aware that billionaires own a lot of companies and have their fingers in a lot of places. I am aware that Jeff Bezos owns Whole Foods, for example. Even grocery stores have been shown to price gouge the consumer so that they can then pocket the difference and enrich their corporate owners.
Personally, I’m done with that shit. So I’m not spending my money at places the billionaires own as much as I can avoid them.
When it comes to groceries, I have a game plan in mind. I am lucky enough to live in a place where there are plentiful farmers markets and local grocers still serving their neighborhoods. Places like Walt Churchill’s (which is employee-owned) and Kazmaiers are within reach, and they work with local farmers and suppliers as much as possible. I want to support those businesses, not Kroger, a place talking about doing “dynamic pricing” to further price-gouge customers, just specific times of the day.
Why enrich the billionaires when I can shop local instead? That’s one reason. The others?
2 – I’m a broke as fuck self-employed person, and people depend on me.
I have been a full-time self-employed person since July of 2023. There was a very brief window where I worked at a dollar store for a month. But then the register nearly caught on fire and poor management made me leave within 4 weeks of working there. Aside from that, I have been fully self-employed, working out of my studio.
There will be months where I will have big windfalls. Those months, I have to squirrel away as much money as I can, because there are other months that are very lean.
So part of this no-buy challenge is simple: I barely have any fun spending money even on a good month. Maybe once every four months I have a day to splurge $40 at Goodwill and that’s it, for the most part. But even after those splurges, there is that sense of guilt in me. Because I know that I could tuck that money away for a rainy day, for myself or for someone else.
(I am also aware that I have a lot of things sitting in my closet, waiting to be used, worn, crafted with, or read. But that is for a later bullet point.)
I have also, unfortunately, become something of a safety net for some of the people around me, especially friends and family members. I need to make sure that I have funds set aside for them, because they are not in a place where they can easily save money.
Also, I have three cats dependent on me for care. And one of them is very elderly. I need to make sure that I have the funds set aside for any veterinary bills that pop up.
There have been times this year where funds were very tight, because something frivolous came up and sucked away the funding I could have used for something else. I want to get better about managing my resources so that I can take care of myself and the people and pets who rely on me.
3 – I have a lot of stuff in my apartment that needs to be used.
As I am writing this, I have so much yarn. I also have a lot, A LOT, of scrap fabric begging to be used for quilting projects. And a lot of paint, and clay, and paper, and…
Let’s just say I should not be buying any new toys because I have plenty to work with here at home.
I also have a lot of thread, and the know-how to mend things that tear. So I don’t need to buy new clothes, because I know how to repair the clothes I currently have. I also have the means to make new clothes if I wanted.
There are also a lot of books in my personal collection that need to be read that I have not gotten to yet. This is actually a good segue to…
4 – I have community resources, such as public libraries, at my disposal.
Don’t tell anyone, but I have library cards with two separate library systems.
This actually works to my benefit, because if one library does not have a particular resource I’m looking for, the other one does. For example, I know one library system has small business resources, job fairs, and a truly massive DVD collection. The other library has tools available for rent, such as wifi routers, tents, hammers, and even some power tools.
For 2025, I want to engage with my library resources as much as I possibly can. Not only are they free or mostly free, they are already supported by the community. Plus, the more the community uses those resources, the more funding the libraries can ask for.
Which is VERY VITAL in the age of book bans, and will be even more important for 2025, if conservatives get their way.
Also, Toledo has fantastic metro parks, and I want to go to them more often. Toledo has been making a lot of effort to be more bike-friendly, and I want to support that.
5 – My communities have free stuff all the freaking time.
Both libraries that I am a part of host music concerts, and one of them does so throughout the year. There are also festivals, parks, and even the Toledo Art Museum is free to attend.
In short, I will not be at a loss for things to do with a no-buy year.
So What Will Make This Hard?
Ok, real talk: I love my friends. I care about them deeply. And they also love spending money. So I have to be very clear and explicit about this challenge with them. I imagine some of them will be understanding, but others may have a very hard time wrapping their head around this.
I’m not going to ask them to participate with me. A no-buy challenge is a very personal one to tackle. People do these challenges for different reasons, and I’ve already outlined the reasons I have for doing it.
I also need to reconcile doing a no-buy challenge while also running a Ko-fi page and possibly some KickStarter campaigns in 2025. That said, part of doing a no-buy challenge is to prepare for this feasible reality: that funds raised through crowdfunding will shrink next year. I imagine I’m not the only one tightening up my wallet in 2025, so I have to be prepared as much as I can.
What About Mutual Aid?
I’m part of a lot of artist and cartoonist servers, with dedicated channels where artists can ask for mutual aid. These are people asking for short-term funds to help them meet immediate bills, so that they don’t starve or have their electricity shut off, etc.
While thinking about this challenge, I have waffled back and forth about whether to have mutual aid be an exception, or part of the no-buy rule.
And honestly, I think it just comes down to the moment – if I have the funds to help somebody immediately, I want to do so.
Part of the reason I want to do the no-buy challenge is to have the resources available to help not just myself, but the people around me. (See Point 2 above.)
Really, for me, the no-buy challenge comes down to engaging less with corporatization, neoliberalism, and capitalism, and more with community, whether it’s the people around me or the virtual communities I’ve joined. And part of being in a community is being able to share resources with people when they need it.
So there we go! This is longer than my usual blog posts, so thanks for hanging in there with me! Usually I just draw webcomics, like The Legend of Jamie Roberts, which you can read for free on the official site, or get remastered pages (with bonus content) when you get physical copies of the comic.
And if you want to stay in touch, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter. I’d like to check in throughout 2025 to let you know how the no-buy challenge is going.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!
You. Are. Awesome.