about adapting to frugal lifestyle after an incomebreakdown ๐ซ
my adhd is giving me a hard time not spending for any impulsive ideas but I am left with only round about a quarter of my former income and I can't adapt well. I had enough before and since half a year I don't, but my brain wants to spent money like before.
we don't eat expensive, but we snack expensive. i usually don't buy a lot of clothes but I lost a lot of weight and most doesn't fit anymore (and I'm going to look for a new job soon, so I need at least one proper outfit).
we got a cat and a dog, which had super heavy health scares last year. so I pay for the insurances instead of waiting for the worst. the dog is allergic af and I have to buy expensive special food.
i am a single parent and have to take care of the teenagers needs as well.
I'm going to sell my car soon, because I just have to to get by. social aid doesn't pay anything at this point because I was couple of bucks over the limit so far. But they don't consider the high debt I got. So I'm actually pretty concerned right now. i used to be poor before, so I kinda know I will get over this episode, but it terrifies me at this point.
long story short:
i need a network of no-buy-buddies that helps keep me from spending too much. anyone out there?
Some concerns here:
As for accountability buddies, we're always here in !frugal@lemmy.world. Post away!
no-buy is an exclamation of me not trying to buy things that aren't essentials (I'm not native english btw if some wording is off). I will need to buy food, I'll have to pay for rent, food, hygiene and transportation i.e., but I won't buy new cleaning/writing/gaming/whatever things if the old ones still work, won't pay for streaming and music (just rediscovered my old mp3 collection) and I won't spent on clothes (except for an outfit for work interviews maybe). So it's more a mindset and not an actual no-buy-story I'm trying to tell - we're still living in capitalism ๐
my city is walkable, actually I bought the car just two years ago (after having none for five years) but couldn't foresee my health issues incoming. we got "good" public transport as well.
snack expensive - we mostly buy brand snacks. with regular food I stopped buying brands and got discounterfood. but we still buy the brand snacks (that's been a realisation while writing my post). trying to replicate things at home is a good idea, I'm gonna try that!
the pet thing breaks my heart in advance. the cat is one thing, but taking my kid's dog away after them sticking together since 7 years seems impossible. gotta think about that.
thanks for your thoughts. glad to find accountability buddies!
Hmm, maybe just the cat, then?
I would probably change the phrase to "no luxuries" instead, then. I thought you were gonna try an extreme thing like buying nothing for a period of time or something.
Discounts are generally good and unsubscribing from streaming services in light of all the YouTube, library services, etc. that we already have is great!
ah i see where the confusion came from. going without buying anything at all seems impossible. only-basic-essentials-buddies doesn't sound as good as no-buy-buddies haha
I rediscovered our library and it's only 25โฌ/year - don't know why I didn't figure this out earlier ๐
ya, the cat. guess I'll have to give it away if nothing else works out.
Be sure to sell the cat for at least a bit more than snake food so that it doesn't become snake food. Never just give animals away, unfortunately because of the risk of horrible people.
Libraries aren't free over there?! Interesting...
Sincerely,
An American