May 2014 No/Low Buy: Support, Hugs, Commiseration, and Confessional

shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
Current body
Jeffreestar cosmetics
Makeuptalk.com forums

Help Support Makeuptalk.com forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Mehhhhh sort of fail.

I spend $46 at Ulta. But it got me to Platinum so now I"ll get $10 back for my birthday next month. And another $5 from Ebates. So really it was only like $30. And now I don't have to worry about expiring points. Soooo mild fail, but I'm not overly upset. If I spend another DIME on makeup this month I will be though.

 
I went and bought two colored mascaras on Wednesday.  They were listed at $8.99 each, but I asked the SA to check for me, and they actually rang up at $5 each.  They were on sale and on the allowed list, so I feel fine about those.  

But today, I was in a thrift shop, and saw a brand new Tokyo Milk soap for $2 and bought it.  The money is not such  problem--$2 is cheap after all--but I CAN'T BELIEVE I BOUGHT SOAP!  I haven't bought any soap in like 8 months (going though stash) and yet I STILL have at least 8 months worth of soap/shower gel in my house.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?

 
OMGADDD YOU GUYS! I am swearing myself off of instagram and the #themakeupexchange tag.... $300 dollars after. OTL. This month was giant suck. On the other hand, my monthly allowances will now go towards paying off that balance, so I'm on a forced no buy for 3 months.

 
I bought a few things at Target the other day, but I had a gift card from my birthday, so it was fine. My c section has been moved up to Thursday, so in a few days, I will mostly cease caring about buying anything, I'm sure. So I should be good for the rest of this month!

 
So I haven't been as active on here as I would like to be (other than dropping in to whine about my spending habits every once in a while), and I decided it really is time to just buckle down to the no- buy. A bit of a rant ahead:

As the months go by I am starting to feel very unhappy where I am in terms of career goals and what I want to really be doing with my life. My job is a comfortable desk job, and it pays decent, but the stress has been mounting almost to unbearable heights over the last 6-8 months as the company changes faster than we can keep track -- and it is forcing me to look into my options for the future. My boss is fully aware that I am not going to be a "lifer" as my predecessor was (she has been here since the beginning of this company 25 years ago, and is retiring in a month), and he fully encourages my endeavors, knowing that at some point I will have to bid my farewells to the company and perhaps move onto greener, more self employed pastures.

So with that in mind, I am going to be forcing myself off of the makeup bandwagon and really taking a close look at our finances. Things are turning out to where, fingers crossed, I may be able to take the leap into self employment within the year's time if all goes well... but this means that I need to start saving furiously. It's not so much as a question of "if" I should do this now, but that I must. I am in a place in life where I feel I have outgrown my needs and levels of fulfillment here, and it's time I started trying to create a living with the gift that I was given.

So that's where I stand this month. I am fully aware and even prepared for the fact that it's going to be a very rough rest of the year. I am trying my best to enjoy the things I have, the fact that we just moved into a beautiful house, and that is such a huge accomplishment - but house achieved, now I can enjoy it while working towards improving my quality of life and satisfaction with what I do.

I'm going to need all the support I can from you guys......... :unsure2:  cause man this will be tough.

 
@@jaylilee Good luck! Maybe if you get the urge to buy something, someone here can dissuade you/leave a negative review for the product

I'm currently still struggling over whether I should purchase a darker foundation for the summer (in addition to all of my other low-buy fails...)

 
chibimorph said:
@@jaylilee Good luck! Maybe if you get the urge to buy something, someone here can dissuade you/leave a negative review for the product

I'm currently still struggling over whether I should purchase a darker foundation for the summer (in addition to all of my other low-buy fails...)
Click to expand...
That's what I'm hoping for, that I get dissuaded from buying things xD. 

 
Success story: I went to sephora to get a 100 point perk for my fairy godchild and saw the sun safety kit. I picked it up and spent some time looking at the contents and started walking to the register. Then I realized 1) I'm on a no buy! 2) I only really want 1 item, and sorta want 2-3 and 3) I felt like I should buy it since it's sold out online and in other stores but that's not a good reason to buy something!

So in the end, I left empty handed but proud!

 
*cough* The home-and-body counterpart to my favorite perfume oil company just announced that they are going to have hair gloss (basically, hair oil in spray form) in my official Spring 2014 perfume oil scent -- for this month only.  I'm not sure how long the order window is going to be.  It might be just a few days.  On the up side, I have a special bank account set up specifically for perfume/comic cons/vacations, and I've been able to not touch it for several months (I actually had money left over in it after ECCC), so I have plenty of money for this.  And I've been wishing this exact scent/product combination existed for a couple of months.  And now it will.  Clearly, this is Meant to Be.

 
So far, I've been very good about sticking to pure replacement items for makeup and skin care. However, I have gone a little crazy buying crafting supplies for a couple of showers I'm throwing over the next few months, so that will be something to work on for June.

 
I was doing so well. I managed to go 4 months without a single makeup purchase apart from a refill of my BB cream .

But then I gave into the Sephora VIB sale (I didn't do that much damage; I needed a setting powder, and I limited it to one blush and a lipstick) but since then, I've fallen off the wagon. I'm going to Boston in 2 weeks and had planned on buying nothing until I got there, but since the VIB sale, I hauled at Shoppers on a bonus day, snuck a lipstick into a Murale order, and made a second Sephora order on some clearance items I really didn't need (a Tarte blush & Edward Bess lipgloss.) I am saying though after some US drugstore staples and maybe some Tom Ford in Boston, I am done for at least the Summer. 

 
Small victories: I didn't make a single purchase during ebates' 15% sale, even when Ulta and Sephora had good sales and GWPs. I didn't buy anything from Beauty.com's 20% off sale. I didn't buy anything from Banana Republic's 40% off online including sale items one-day sale. I didn't buy anything from BareMinerals' 12 hour sale even though I'm dying to try some of their eyeshadow palettes. I didn't buy any baublebar buried baubles even though I have a gift card and they were items that had been in my wish list recently. I convinced myself to skip Julep this month even though it would have been free w/points. It's not that I don't want to buy things, it's that I want my purchases to be things that I reeeeaaallly want and not just some fun junk that I got on sale.

 
STill doing ok for the month, nothing other than my ulta purchase and the month is almost over!!!

 
I am so incredibly excited for this weekend! taking tomorrow off through Tuesday, back to work on Wednesday, and I'm SO. LOOKING. FORWARD TO IT.

Got a lot of work to get done at home, but it'll be good. I'll be able to stay away from shops. if I can stay away from online websites then I'll be ok. I now have a more pressing goal to work towards and it's amazing how much I don't want anything.

My old wnw comfort zone palette is getting lots of love lately too. I really like the silvery shade because it's not a cool or neutral silver, but leans a bit warm, which actually really looks good on me. I just wish WNW made it as a single.

 
So exciting! I can see the end of a tunnel! I may actually need to buy shower gel before the end of summer!

(As a recap, I donated about twenty unopened bottles of shower gel to a shelter for victims of intimate partner violence about A YEAR AGO and have been on a shower gel no-buy -- just using up partially-used bottles ever since.)

 
meaganola said:
So exciting! I can see the end of a tunnel! I may actually need to buy shower gel before the end of summer!

(As a recap, I donated about twenty unopened bottles of shower gel to a shelter for victims of intimate partner violence about A YEAR AGO and have been on a shower gel no-buy -- just using up partially-used bottles ever since.)
Click to expand...
That's pretty fantastic. I ALMOOOSTTTT fell into the B&BW shower gel trap a few months ago, but I still had 2 giant bottles of dove and a couple of suave bottles of shower gel, so I promised myself not to buy any until I finish those. I'm still working through half of a dove, and half of a suave bottle. I think if I get anything from B&BW it'll be their japanese cherry one or their endless weekend one.

Thankfully I realized that B&BW has a sale almost like every other week, so I know I can always get it way later after I am done with the stuff I have.

 

Latest posts

Back
Top