I’m a sucker for experiments—from the guy who didn’t get into a car for a year, to the blogger who asked for at least one discount daily, to the women who aren’t buying clothes for 365 days. Here, two more money-related experiments that caught my attention.
A Month without Credit Cards. Plenty of people go whole hog, close their credit card accounts, and survive for a lot longer than a month without plastic. But the month-long experiment taken on by Bargain Babe Julia Scott is interesting because she has a fresh outsider’s take on the cash-only existence. While she’s not giving up her credit cards for good anytime soon, here’s the wisdom that she culled from the experiment:
During my no-credit experiment last month I did just what studies comparing cash and credit card spending have shown: I spent less with cash. A lot less…
I plan to leave my credit card at home on a regular basis unless I have a pre-planned purchase to make. I can see purchases that require a credit card a mile away, so carrying around a bottomless pit of money is just tempting myself. Plus, credit card perks — my main reason for using plastic — do not add up that quickly. I earned an average of $16 in cash-back credit card rewards per month this year, but on a cash diet I spent $200 less. That’s an awfully big perk!
One-Year Wardrobe Project. About a year ago, J.D. from Get Rich Slowly moved all of his shirts and sweaters into a spare room. Whenever he needed something to wear, he plucked it from the room, wore it, and then (presumably, after laundry had taken place) returned the item to its normal home in the closet. Not long into the experiment, he discovered that he went to the spare room less and less. And 12 months later, there were some three dozen articles of clothing still there. So …
On Tuesday, I gritted my teeth, grabbed the 37 shirts and sweaters still left in the spare room, and took them to a local thrift store. Some of the things I donated had never been worn (or had been worn just a couple of times). It hurt to part with those clothes. I probably spent more than $750 to purchase them (remember, I buy a lot of clothes at thrift stores), so in a way it felt like I was throwing away $750.
But it occurred to me that’s the wrong way to look at it. I’m not throwing that money away now. I threw away that $750 years ago when I bought the clothes I wasn’t ever going to wear.
Clothing is the most obvious purchase that people use infrequently—or not at all. But Lord knows we could all get rid of all kinds of stuff. J.D. speculates:
My guess is that of the things I own, probably 20% of the Stuff gets 80% of the use.
What this boils down to is: You probably should have never bought most of the stuff you own in the first place. Think about that the next time you’re at a store and wondering if you need some thing you’re staring at on a shelf.
