Why I Try To Spend Less On Things And More On Experiences

Isabella Sanchez Castaneda
Tue, 06 Jun 2017 14:45:48 +0000

At the beginning of 2017 I made a new year's resolution to “spend less money on things and more on experiences” and as we hit the 6 month mark of this, once new, year I have started to reflect on that decision. This resolution and realization came after I was reflecting on the first semester of freshman year and even some of high school.

I noticed how many times my friends and I were caught up in always wanting new things and wanting to go out but then not having the money. I started to realize that we were buying new things and still felt like we had nothing to wear. Or even worse! We were looking good in our outfits but ended up staying in our dorm rooms because now we didn’t have enough to splurge on the Uber out.

Then there was the look around my dorm room and my room at home. I had accumulated a ton of little things that seemed like great purchases at the time but now are just taking up space. I added up that all those little $5 -$20 buys and, though they didn’t seem like much individually, together I was just throwing money away.

This is when my new mindset started to form. And let me clear up that ultimately, it’s not about being frugal, to me it’s about being intentional. Despite my (slowly) changing perspective, I didn’t have a clear sense of how I wanted to approach things.

Then, during one of my Netflix scrolls, I serendipitously stumbled upon “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things.” The 80-minute film talks a lot about changing our mindset when it comes to consumption and the ways we can ensure that what we keep in our lives actually adds value. After watching I started looking more into minimalism and how to “live a meaningful life with less.” I am far from calling myself a minimalist but I have started to see how taking this cleansing approach to physical items has helped me in more ways than just keeping a couple extra dollars in the bank account.

Diving into all of this during winter break prompted me to want to start the coming year fresh. So, I kicked off 2017 with this simple resolution to spend less money on things and more on experiences. I made it two-pronged because I knew that what I wanted wasn’t simply to stop spending. I wanted to make sure that I was instead opting to see the world around me and knock some things off my bucket list. So far, I have taken baby steps in the right direction, but the many responsibilities at school put this on the back burner. One thing I did do was start to question the things I purchased whenever my friends and I went on a mall run or when I was scrolling through H&M’s website instead of listening to my professor. I noticed that just the simple question of “do I really need this?” or “wouldn’t I rather use these $15 the next time I’m in the city?” helped me be much more intentional with my purchases. Again, it wasn't that I didn't have the money for these things, though I am on that broke college student status, it was that I wanted to really ask myself it these things would be significant in my life. And as it turned out, I later found that I didn't even miss not having that new shirt, and it pushed me to reach for some of the less used things in my closet.

Now that I am home from the summer I have the time to dive even deeper into this journey. These first couple weeks have been a long session of decluttering and cleansing my space of things I have no use for.

Also with this much appreciated time off from school (and making more money from a summer job), I want to keep the intentionality of my spending and add in the experiences component. I want to launch into the world around me, even if that simply means walking around my neighborhood more. I want to appreciate the great city of Philadelphia that I am in and travel to other places too. I know that these moments, both big and small, will mean so much more to me later on than any shiny new item will.

Hopefully, I can keep this resolution up and really try to learn to seek joy in the adventures I take instead of the number of dresses or shoes I have in my closet. I am constantly learning and changing up my strategies but the important thing is that I am sticking to it!

So, how have your new year’s resolutions going?