No Buy Program Guide [on YouTube]
Great new video from Beauty Unboxed - My whole make up collection, 2019. This lady is one of my favorites. I watched her all last year. In this video, she laid out her whole collection, counted what she has, figured out how long it will take to use it. I need to do this right away! It's nice to see her pretty collection - she is German and lives in London.
Lucia Tepper had a very helpful video on February 17 called No Buys: Expectations vs Reality. She talked about how we do the No Buy to be happy and get a payoff, just like shopping, and sometimes we get on a plateau where there is no payoff any more. I think this is what happened in my No Buy. I was in a tight month and was not doing extra debt payments, and I did not get that payoff. So I lost my steam.
I ALMOST CHARGED A $78.00 SHOWER GEL ?
The HSN charge card was the most tempting and scary of all the new charge cards I opened lately. All weekend I ordered things, then cancelled the orders a few moments later. I deleted the card from my account, but then called customer service to have them look it up for me. I purchased and cancelled a shower gel that cost $78.00 with tax and shipping. It was a 3 liter Perlier bottle. I wanted it badly, though I already have almost 30 shower gel bottles.
The thing that is so tempting about the HSN card is that they split everything up into five or six payments, and it makes everything look so inexpensive and safe to buy. My brain only sees the flex pays, not the total. I would see five payments of $3.33, or $12.00. I thought I would be able to buy in a controlled way and keep up with paying off the charges. But deep down I knew I would not. I have had all the shopping TV cards. I forced myself to cancel the orders I wanted so badly. I called to close the card, and cut it up. It was hard! [Added later: all I thought about was the low Flex Pays. Only after I had cut the card up and was throwing away the envelope did I notice the white folded paper that said 28% APR.]
I realized I really have an addiction to credit cards, and this is my most serious problem. The intense happiness I felt when the credit card packets came in the mail, the daydreams I had about all the things I would get with them. The sadness I felt when I had to close them. My conscience is stronger after my one year No Buy and I just couldn't let myself keep them. My attitude in the past was, "I don't care, I feel bad, and I'm going to have what I want." But now I can't be carefree. My No Buy brain keeps telling me I will never use all those new things, that I have to use all my older things first, that I need to pay off my old cards before I incur more bills.
I feel pretty good about closing all these new credit cards, because I wanted them so badly. Even if I buy some things, it's not as bad as opening new cards.