15 Things I Quietly Stopped Buying That Changed My Finances
My card got declined for $6 worth of gas station snacks while a guy in a Steelers jacket stood behind me waiting.
And I did that thing. You know the thing. Where you act like oh yeah no I actually didn't want those anyway while your entire face turns into a furnace and you cannot make eye contact with the cashier or the Steelers guy or literally any living creature within a 40 foot radius.That was three years ago. I was 25. And I genuinely thought I was doing fine.
I was so not doing fine.
Okay But Here's What Was Actually Going On
I had a job. Like a real one. Direct deposit and everything. $38,000 a year which felt like monopoly money compared to what I made in college so I thought I had arrived somewhere.
But nobody in my family ever talked about money. And I mean that in the most literal way possible — like if you brought it up at dinner my mom would redirect the conversation so fast you'd think you'd said something offensive. So I grew up just. not knowing. Not knowing how any of it worked. Not knowing what a good savings rate was or what an APR actually meant or that credit card interest was basically a villain designed specifically to ruin your twenties.
So I just. spent. Not on crazy stuff. Not on trips to Europe or anything. Just on life. The way you spend when you're not thinking about it.
And on payday — the same day rent was due — I'd have maybe $40 left over for the next two weeks. Forty dollars. To eat. To exist. To be a person.
I read something once that said something like 60% of Americans couldn't cover a $1,000 emergency without borrowing money and I remember feeling this weird mix of relieved and devastated at the same time. Relieved because okay so it's not just me. Devastated because. wait it's not just me. Half the country is doing this same panicked math at 2am and we're all just. not talking about it.
The Sunday I Sat On My Bathroom Floor And Finally Looked
It was January. Cold. One of those Sundays that feels specifically designed to make you feel bad about your life.
I sat down on the bathroom floor — the tile kind that's always freezing — with my phone and my bank statement and I just went through it. Line by line. Because I genuinely could not figure out where like $400 had gone that month and I needed to know.
And it wasn't one thing. It's never one thing is it.
It was $14.99 for a streaming service I forgot existed. It was Starbucks three times a week adding up to something I don't want to say out loud. It was a Target run that started as "I just need dish soap" and ended with a candle and a $22 face wash I did not need because my current face wash was sitting at home completely fine. It was a $12.99 subscription box. It was the $8 avocado toast near my office because I hadn't meal prepped again and I was hungry and tired and it was right there.
None of it felt like a decision while I was doing it. That's what got me.
None of it felt like anything. It just. happened.
I Tried Budgeting First And I Want To Tell You How Badly That Went
Downloaded the app. Made all the categories. Assigned every dollar a purpose like every personal finance person on the internet tells you to do. Felt very responsible for approximately four days.
Blew the budget by day eleven. Every month. For three straight months.
And here's what I did every time I blew it — I just stopped looking. Closed the app. Pretended the budget didn't exist until the next month when I'd open it back up and try again with the same numbers and fail the same way again by day eleven.
Okay wait let me back up because I think I know what I was doing wrong. I was budgeting for the person I wanted to be instead of the person I actually was. I gave myself $40 for eating out. I was someone who ate out literally four times a week. Of course I failed. The budget wasn't wrong about math it was wrong about me.
What actually changed things wasn't a better budget. It was just. stopping. Specific things. Not reducing them. Not moderating them. Just deciding certain things were done for now and moving on.
The 15 Things. And I'm Gonna Tell You The Stories Because The List Alone Means Nothing.
Generic medicine exists and I wasted years not knowing that
Name brand Tylenol. Name brand Nyquil. Name brand allergy stuff. For years. Just automatically grabbing the one I recognized from commercials.
Then one October I was sick and completely broke and the store brand was sitting right there next to it for $4 less and I grabbed it because I literally had no other option. Same active ingredient. Same milligrams. Same everything. The FDA literally requires it to be the same thing
I remember standing in the cold medicine aisle feeling actually angry. Like genuinely angry. Someone should have told me this earlier. I'd been paying a brand tax for my entire adult life on medicine I bought when I was sick and miserable and not in any condition to be making price comparisons.
Bottled water was a whole scam I participated in voluntarily
$12 to $15 a month on cases of water. Sometimes more when I'd grab a bottle from the gas station or the work vending machine for $1.50. Just. water.
Bought a Brita pitcher for $22 one random afternoon at Target — which is ironic because Target is usually where my money went to die. But that pitcher paid for itself inside of six weeks and now it just sits on my counter looking at me like you're welcome. Haven't bought a single bottle since.
The gym membership. Oh man. The gym membership.
$39.99 a month.
Four visits. Total. In fourteen months.
And I kept paying because canceling felt like officially giving up on becoming a person who works out and I wasn't ready to do that emotionally even though I was clearly never going. So I just. paid. Every single month. For a place I drove past regularly and felt guilty about.
Finally canceled it on a Thursday afternoon sitting in my car in a Walgreens parking lot. Did the math right there. $559.86. For four visits. That's like $140 per visit to a gym I could've just. gone to. But didn't.
I sat in that parking lot for a while honestly.
My sparkling water problem and I'm just gonna own it
Okay this one is embarrassing and I accept that.
A 12-pack of LaCroix every four or five days. Sometimes faster. I tracked it for one month because my sister made a joke about it and I wanted to prove her wrong. I spent $58 on sparkling water that month. Fifty eight actual dollars. On water. With bubbles.
She was right. I was wrong. Bought a SodaStream for $30. That was over a year ago and at this point the savings are kind of uncomfortable to calculate because it just highlights how long I should've done this earlier.
Seven subscriptions I forgot I was paying for
Seven. I found them one night at like 1am when I couldn't sleep. Downloaded Rocket Money on my phone just to look and then just. sat there. With my mouth slightly open. Scrolling.
They ranged from $4.99 to $14.99 each. One was a meditation app — and here is the thing that really gets me — I was literally too stressed about money to ever actually open the meditation app I was paying $9.99 a month for. That level of irony should be studied by scientists
Canceled four of them that night. Kept three I actually used. $47 a month. Just. back. Right away. I could have screamed.
Coffee — and I want to be honest that I did not fully quit
Because I tried to fully quit and I lasted nine days and was genuinely terrible to be around. My coworker Rae — same Rae from the $60 thing — actually asked me if something was wrong. That's how bad it was.
So that approach did not work. What did work was going from every weekday to twice a week. Tuesday and Friday. My treat days. The rest of the time I make coffee at home with a $15 pour-over thing and a bag of ground coffee that costs like $11 and lasts me almost three full weeks.
My old habit was costing me around $85 to $90 a month. I'm at maybe $22 now. And honestly the Tuesday latte hits completely different when it's not just a reflex you don't even notice anymore.
Convenience store stops that were quietly ruining me
These ones are sneaky because they feel like nothing. $4 here. $5 there. Just grabbing a drink and a snack on the way home from work. Normal human stuff.
But then I went through three months of statements and these little nothing stops added up to between $80 and $110 each month. For things like. warm gas station hot dogs. Gatorade I didn't need. Chips I ate in my car alone.
Not exactly a lifestyle worth protecting.
Stopped cold. Started keeping a water bottle and some granola bars in my car so the impulse had somewhere to go that wasn't a cash register. The craving went away way faster than I expected honestly.
Buying clothes as a form of therapy that did not work
This one took me the longest to be honest about with myself.
I bought gym clothes. Specifically. New leggings. A new sports bra. Running shoes I wore to Kroger twice and that's it. And every time there was this feeling like okay this is the thing. New gear new me. This is the purchase that makes me become the person I want to be.
Except it never did. The clothes went in a drawer. I kept paying the gym membership I already told you about. The transformation never happened because the transformation was never in the leggings.
Stopped buying clothes unless something literally wore out or broke. Went eleven months without buying a single thing. And the weird part is I started liking what I already had more. Like I actually looked at what was in my closet for the first time instead of always looking past it toward some future outfit.
Dryer sheets — this one is tiny but hear me out
Wool dryer balls. $12. Two years ago. Have not bought a single dryer sheet since. That's maybe $40 to $50 saved over two years which I know sounds like nothing on its own.
But none of these are anything on their own. That's the whole entire point. It's all of them together. The $50 here and the $47 there and the $559 gym membership from hell. Together they become a number that would make you sick.
Delivery fees were a tax I chose to pay for being lazy
There was a Thai place literally one mile from my apartment. One. Mile. I could see it from the gas station on my corner almost.
One night I was ordering from there and the food was $18 and by the time I checked out I was paying $34. Almost double. For food that was one mile away. I remember staring at the total and thinking. what am I doing.
Started picking it up instead. Same pad thai. Same spring rolls. Half the money. And honestly the five minute drive became kind of a nice thing. Gets me out of the apartment. I listen to something on the way. It's become a little ritual I actually like.
$7 greeting cards that nobody keeps
Birthday cards. Holiday cards. Thank you cards. $6 or $7 each for something someone reads for maybe 45 seconds. Smiles at. Puts on a shelf. Throws away quietly three weeks later when they're cleaning.
Started sending voice memos instead. Just a voice note on someone's birthday being like hey I'm thinking about you and here's a specific memory I have with you that I love. People responded to those more warmly than any Hallmark card I ever spent ten minutes choosing in a CVS aisle. Haven't bought a card in probably a year and a half.
Lottery tickets were a habit I inherited and never questioned
My dad bought scratchers every single week. Just always had. Sunday morning routine. So I did too without thinking about it because that's what routines do — they pass themselves down like invisible inheritance nobody asked for.
$5 here. $10 there. It felt like nothing because it felt like tradition.
Then I looked up the actual odds. The actual real published odds of winning anything meaningful on a scratch ticket and I just
I stopped. Like that week. The math is $10 a week is $520 a year and the odds of winning that back are roughly the same as getting hit by a meteor while also finding a four leaf clover. I'm exaggerating slightly but. not by as much as you'd think.
Missed the ritual more than the tickets honestly. Found other small Sunday morning things to do instead.
Extended warranties on stuff that costs $30
The Best Buy guy is extremely convincing. So is the little checkbox on Amazon that says "protect your purchase" which sounds so reasonable when you're already spending money and your guard is down.
I said yes to everything. Always. Even on a $30 pair of earbuds. Even on a $25 phone case. Even on stuff that literally costs less than the warranty.
I read somewhere that warranty companies make enormous profits specifically because most people never file claims. The whole business model is basically you paying for peace of mind you'll never use. Started saying no automatically. Have not once. Not a single time. Wished I'd said yes.
Store brand groceries — same exact cart different price
Okay I want to be really clear. I am not saying buy garbage food. I am not saying eat stuff you hate. I am saying. pasta is pasta. Canned tomatoes are canned tomatoes. Frozen vegetables are frozen vegetables. And the store brand version of those things is usually the exact same product in different packaging.
Switched about half my grocery list to store brand one month. Same Kroger. Same cart. Same amount of food in the same bags. Saved $35 on that trip alone. Did it again the next week. $30. And the week after.
It is genuinely a little upsetting how long I spent paying more for the same exact thing because the label was a color I recognized.
Books I bought to feel like a person who reads books
I have 23 unread books on a shelf in my bedroom. Twenty three. Some of them I bought over two years ago. The spines are perfect because they've never been opened.
But every few weeks I'd buy another one. Because buying a book feels productive. It feels like self improvement. It feels like becoming a better smarter more interesting person even if the book just goes on the shelf with all the other books you bought to feel like a better smarter more interesting person.
Got a library card. A real physical one. Walk in. Pick something up. Read it or don't. Return it. Free.
Here's the plot twist I did not see coming — I've read more books in the past year than the three years before it combined. Because when a book is free and temporary you actually read it. When it cost you $17 and lives on your shelf judging you forever you just. avoid it. Which sounds insane but I swear that's how it worked for me.
What Actually Happened After Six Months Of This
End of October. $340 sitting in my account after all my bills were paid and all my groceries were bought and gas was in my car and everything was covered.
Three hundred and forty dollars left over.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot to some people. But if you're the person reading this at midnight because you know what $40-until-payday feels like then you know what $340 left over means. You know what that number feels like in your chest.
I took a screenshot at 11:40 at night. Just. the balance. And I wanted to send it to someone but I didn't have anyone who would understand what it meant. What it had cost me to get there. Not the money part. The embarrassment part. The sitting on cold bathroom tile part. The gas station snack part.
So I saved the screenshot in a note to myself. No caption. Like future me needed to be the witness since no one else was around.
That $340 turned into $800 over the next two months. Then $1,200 by spring. I'm sitting just under $2,000 right now which I know isn't retirement money or anything but four years ago I was -$47 on a random Tuesday and had to borrow $60 from Rae and told her I lost my debit card so she wouldn't know.
Rae knew. She was kind about it. I think about that a lot.
The Part Nobody Warned Me About
The dread got quieter.
That's the part I wasn't expecting. There's this specific low hum of anxiety that lives in your chest when you're broke all the time. When you don't want to open your bank app. When you round up every price in your head at the grocery store and pray you got the math close enough. When someone says let's go out to eat and you say you're not hungry because not hungry is easier to say than broke.
That hum. It got quieter.
Not gone. I want to be honest about that. Not gone completely. But quieter in a way that changed how everything else felt. I slept a little better. I stopped having that 3am jolt where you wake up suddenly remembering a bill you might have forgotten. My shoulders came down from wherever they'd been living near my ears for two years.
Nobody told me that was gonna happen. I thought saving money would just feel like. having money. But it felt more like being able to breathe all the way. For the first time in a really long time.
Real Talk Though Because I Don't Want To Lie To You
I still bought a $28 kitchen gadget last month. Some avocado slicer thing. Haven't touched it. It sits in the drawer next to the regular knife that does the same thing.
I went through a rough patch in June where I was sad and lonely and online shopping at midnight felt like the only thing that made the feeling stop for a minute. Spent about $200 that month on stuff I returned half of and kept half of and used none of.
It's not linear. None of this is. And it won't be for you either and that is not something wrong with you. It's just how this goes for people who are learning this stuff backward. In our twenties. On bathroom floors and in parking lots and at 11pm on our phones while our coffee gets cold.
You're gonna try one thing on this list and fall off in two weeks. And then try again in a month. And fall off shorter this time. And try again. And that's it. That's the whole process. There is no moment where it clicks perfectly and you never waste money again. There's just getting a little better. And a little better. And occasionally buying the avocado slicer and forgiving yourself about it by morning.
Hey. Before you put your phone down and try to sleep
Is there one thing on this list you already knew? Like before you even started reading this you already had that one thing in the back of your head. The subscription you keep meaning to cancel. The stops you keep meaning to stop. The stuff you keep buying because it makes you feel like you're becoming someone but you never quite become them.
What's that one thing for you? Not the whole list. Just the one.
Because that's where you start. Tomorrow. Not perfectly. Just. at all.
I'm up for a while if you wanna talk about it
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