Buy Nothing Update: April, The Month We Came Close To Buying Nothing

Buy nothing… sounds easy enough

That’s what I thought back in January when I first heard that other bloggers were doing it. My wife and I are relatively frugal and semi-miimalists. How hard can it be, right? So I accepted the challenge.

The first three months (January, February, and March) were not ultra-frugal. We bought big ticket items that we had planned to purchase for a while, including a new bed and a new car.

April was different. This time, we almost did really buy nothing.  Almost.

Looking at my Personal Capital dashboard, our expenses for April were almost exclusively taxes and mortgage payments.

 

How we bought close to nothing

One of the reasons we bought so few things is our newborn baby girl.

For the first two weeks of April, the baby has held both my wife and I captive in our home. Parenting is tough. And with a newborn, it’s a 24/7 job that requires full attention and a lot of mental energy. Newborns are also very fragile and vulnerable. And when newborns get sick, it’s a big deal. If our baby had a fever, she would likely require hospitalization and a full fever workup including lumbar puncture for cerebral spinal fluid analysis. The outside world is a cesspool of germs and badness that we are trying to avoid for our little one.

In the second week of April, I went back to work. My parental leave is not nearly as generous as my wife’s maternity leave. This was overwhelming and tough for my wife because it left a lot of the daytime childcare to her. Parenting is definitely a lot of work and easily the toughest challenge we have faced. I have a much deeper respect for all parents, especially mothers.

Because we don’t leave the house (except for when I go to work), our spending has dramatically decreased.

 

So what few things did we buy?

Baby stuff

• Swaddle – $13
• Haaka silicone manual breastfeeding pump – $16
• Chamomile essential oil – $14
• “Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene” (book) – $18
• “How to Talk so Kids will Listen & Listen so Kids will Talk” (book) – $10
• Probiotic drops for baby – $20
• Gripe water – $8
• Pacifier #1 – $9
• Pacifier #2 – $12
• Reusable baby cloth diaper wipes – $11
• “Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers” (book) – $11
• Onesies baby clothes – $15
• Vegan safe B12 supplement – $58
• Hyland’s cell salt for infant indigestion and gas – $7
• Tea tree essential oil – $16

We spent a total of $238 for the baby in the month of April

I spent no money on material things for myself and my wife spent nothing on herself too. Not only is parenting tough, but it is also selfless. We are currently spending no money and relatively little attention on ourselves and each other. Most of our available energy is directed to our baby.

Looking at our purchases, you can probably tell that our baby has stomach/gas problems. It is affecting her ability to sleep well. And in turn it’s affecting our ability to get a good night’s rest as well. The sleep deprivation is pretty brutal (especially for my wife), but we are hoping it gets better with time.

Food

We spent very little on food in April.

• Groceries – $110 (mostly on our staples of oatmeal, berries, potatoes, seasonal fruits and vegetables)
• Restaurant – $20 (toward the end of the month, we felt confident enough with our baby to go out to a restaurant to meet one of my wife’s friends for lunch)

The main reason why our food expenses were so low in April is because my wife’s mom brought tons of homemade food to us three times a week. She brings us so much food it’s hard to keep up! I’m not complaining though. She doesn’t want us to worry at all about food so that we can concentrate on taking care of her granddaughter. 🙂

Below is a sampler of what we ate for the month of April.

 

 

 

Things we didn’t buy

Clothes – No surprise here. It’s been awhile since we actually bought new clothes.

Gas – Since I drive my Tesla to work and my wife is pretty much homebound, we spent nothing on gas.

Future spending

In the future months I anticipate our food budget increasing. I don’t expect my wife’s mom to feed us all the time!

I also anticipate travel expenses to go up. I am currently planning on traveling with my wife and daughter in the fall when she’s about eight to nine months old. I love traveling and I want our baby to grow up to experience the joy of traveling as well. Everybody tells me to go when the little one is between six to 18 months old— old enough, but also young enough to be portable (and not hyper mobile). Hopefully her gas problems resolve and she sleeps better by then!

As usual, I’m going to use credit card rewards, points, and miles to fund the majority of our travels. I have a healthy portfolio of a million points and miles. (And this is after using hundreds of thousands of them already.) I’ll likely write more about that later.

 

Final thoughts

It’s fun to think about the future and hope that our little one gets into a better sleeping routine. But I have to do a better job of enjoying our baby in the present moment; month by month, week by week, and day by day. While she can be a  frustrating challenge sometimes, I have to remember that she’s only a baby.

She will only be little for such a short amount of time. And I want to enjoy every moment with her! 🙂