I love a good personal challenge, so books about personal challenges always pique my interest. Back in 2010, inspired by The Uniform Project, I did my own strict shopping ban for six months, so I was interested to read about Cait Flanders' yearlong shopping ban to compare the similarities and differences.
The Year of Less follows Cait's journey to consume less and purge as many belongings as she could that she no longer used. She had a different focus each month, each of which recommitted her energy to her challenge while showing tangible evidence of how her challenge bettered her life. She kept herself accountable by blogging about her experience.
It's admirable how much money Cait was able to save over the year and, through her book, I learned about "stretch goals" - basically an extreme acceleration of a goal tightened into a short time period as an extra form of personal challenge. It's basically all about achieving the supposedly impossible, yet proving you can do whatever you put your mind to with enough discipline.
During her yearlong retail challenge, Cait had to also deal with unforeseen personal challenges in her relationships, her job and her family, any of which could have easily derailed a less committed participant. But Cait learned to sit with her pain rather than reaching out for any of her usual stress coping tactics - all of which involve money (booze, food, shopping). She learned to retrain her brain to soothe herself in other ways, ultimately proving that buying things doesn't fill the holes in our lives. While it's a temporary fix that feels good in the moment, it's not actually getting to the root of the problem.
While our personal challenges varied a bit in terms of our rules, I found a lot of similarities with our experiences. It's takes an incredible amount of willpower to not fall off the wagon and furthermore to not give up completely when you slip up. While I didn't do this at all during my six-month shopping ban, I tried to do another six-month challenge this year (January through June) and failed by buying something in March. Unfortunately, that's all it took for me to give up the challenge. I figured, if I already messed up, I might as well give up. I berated myself for giving up so easily and not just taking a moment and restarting, but I found that by reading about this topic, it's definitely got me inspired to give it another try. The trick is to know that there will be moments of extreme discomfort, of desperately wanting certain things and believing that it's now or never - if you don't get whatever it is at that very moment, you will miss out. And the truth is that you might - you might actually miss out on a deal or a last chance at an item or not get something that you feel will make your life easier/yourself more attractive/your life better/whatever it is that triggers your spending - but the truth is that you also will most likely forget all about whatever it was very quickly. And even if that worst case scenario plays out, you will be okay. After all, it's just things. It's just stuff.
While there was some good advice and a lot of reflection in this book, it ultimately was more of a personal memoir than a how-to book. This is fine - after all, our relationship to money and the things we acquire is a personal thing with our own triggers and motivations - but if you're looking for a book with a solid focus on money management, this might not be the book for you. That said, there is some great advice at the back of the book if you're inspired to try your own shopping ban. And while a ban on spending might sound intimidating, it's actually all boils down to just one simple question: Do you want it or need it? Two tiny words that, if you answer with complete honesty, make a world of difference and, as extreme as it sounds, can actually help change your life.
Judge the cover: 3/5
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