So, we take the magazine diet of the month approach yet again? Instead of learning healthy spending habits, we barge in with the extremest measures we can find, inevitably fail and try the next needlessly extreme thing, repeating the cycle until we have lost so much self esteem in the process that we tell ourselves that we just aren't made to save money?

Well then, this website over there told me that they have got shiny new shirts reduced from 1899,- to just 15 bucks, but only if I order 65 of them in the next.two minutes. Take my credit card! I'll start no spending year right after! Pinky promise!

Been doing this for the last 12 years of my life; never realized it had a name.

I suppose that it's mostly a psychological thing, and Lord only knows what works well there, but it seems like it'd be a lot less arduous and not that much more effective to just set a low monthly budget for nonessentials than to make it 0.

Retail therapy...at Target ?

Probably a healthy think to try like cutting back on drinking or sweets.

Probably won’t make much of a difference environmentally though, and I hope this being a “challenge” doesn’t sprout an industry of pinning issues on people who consider new clothing a luxury.

There is a fascinating book called The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves by J.B. MacKinnon

• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870131-the-day-the-world-stops-shopping

I suggest you check out from your local library. Here's the synopsis:

Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet—but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping.

We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma.

The economy says we must always consume even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure.

The planet says we consume too much: in America, we burn the earth’s resources at a rate five times faster than it can regenerate. And despite efforts to “green” our consumption—by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power—we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions.

Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? At first this question took him around the world, seeking answers from America’s big-box stores to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then the thought experiment came shockingly the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt, and MacKinnon’s ideas were tested in real time.

Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to An investment in our physical and emotional wellness. The pleasure of caring for our possessions. Closer relationships with our natural world and one another. Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will embolden you to envision another way.

The big lifehack here is to not just buy less stuff, but to pool time and resources with your friends.

You spend less money if you cook and play together on a regular or semi-regular basis. Restaruants, pubs, movie theaters, sporting events, all ask or require your money to capitalize on your need for socialization. Also, material goods are frequently aimed at the solitary consumer and aren't really for sharing. Just go around all that nonsense, share/exchange your tools and appliances, host a board-game night, hang out on slack/discord for a few hours, or watch Netflix together.

Edit: if the above seems out of reach, or even the least bit "bad", I encourage you to dig deep and ask yourself: why? I get that I'm advocating a far less solitary lifestyle. Maybe that can't be helped, but it might also just be possible that there's more at work here. For me, I found that I had internalized biases and habits all pointing at a maximal consumption lifestyle. Our economy (here in the US) is built around this behavior, complete with an advertising arm that aggressively teaches it. So, I really am advocating swimming against the current here. But I can also say that the rewards are worth it if you can.

Lemmy is pretty anticapitalist but in my experience asking people to stop supporting the system with their spending tends to upset them. I don't get it.

I hope none of these "only buy what's necessary" people have kids. Or at least think things like birthday and Christmas presents for those kids are necessary.