A return to basics

For as long as I can remember I've been terrible with money. Every time I got pocket money as a kid I'd be on my bike and off to the shops for candy or a magazine as soon as possible. When I got my first proper job I'd take my pay as soon as it'd arrive and head over to the book store to spend it all pretty much immediately. My whole life my goal has just been to keep increasing my earning fast enough to outrun my lifestyle creep.

This surprisingly worked for many years but a few years back I'd realised that it had stopped working and while I hadn't been paying attention my debt levels had been stacking up higher and higher to cover the difference. I make a very good income so this was absurd. At the start of 2026 I started making small changes. I tried my first no-spend month which was kicked off by a end of previous month spending binge. I've started selling off items I've bought but never use and throwing out the things I've kept but that have no value.

We've reached the second half of the year and my progress towards my debt payoff goal is still way behind where I want to be so I really need to dig in and be much more proactive and strict with myself and my rules.

The plan is twofold. First I will be doing a "no-spend" year and secondly I'm going to try to sell off everything I own and don't use that is worth at least $100.

No Spending

I've been using YNAB for a while now to get a baseline of where my money goes and for the most part there are 4 categories where I waste the most money these days so these will be my focus areas.

Zero spending

1. Takeaway/Delivery - I've actually been doing really well with avoiding this but I'm going to keep it going.
2. Random household gadgets/furniture - I don't strictly mean gadgets but things like buying new lights for my front pathway, or a new side table or lamp.
3. Drinking/Going out - I've experimented with cutting out alcohol a few times in the past and after going through my journals over the past several years have realised my best times have seemed to mostly fall in times when I'm not drinking. Besides the hangovers it's really really expensive to drink alcohol these days. Especially going out where a drink might cost $15 each plus cabs adding another $60-75 and you have even a fairly small night out costing $150-250.
4. Books - I love books. I love paper books, and e-books and audiobooks and I have a lot of them. One thing I tend to do is if I want a book on a subject I tend to buy 3-4 and often I'll finish the first 2 and be like yup I know enough or my interest will change before I get to any of them. I'm not going to buy any books this year except for those required by my university courses. I have 2 credits left in my audible account to use when the last two Dungeon Crawler Carl books come out too.

Those are the main no buying things. I expect just these alone will save me approximately $1000 per month.

Less Spending

1. Groceries - My goal is to spend less than $400 per month on groceries with a challenge to see what the lowest month I can have is. I used to spend 3 times this on food per month though lately with ynab I've been between $500-800 per month. So this is going to be a stretch and I'm going to have to cut out some more expensive things that I don't need(Sprite I'm looking at you). But it should be very doable. I'm not including food for my child or my dog in that number that is strictly for myself
2. Entertainment - Besides going out I also have a lot of entertainment expenses. Things like video games, entry fees to exhibitions/conventions, board games, streaming services, etc. My goal here is to cancel all entertainment subscriptions and not to buy any new games for the year. I have one music festival I plan to go to early next year that I will still be going to since it's the one live music event per year I go to these days. I am also in the middle of 3d printing some very large models and I'll continue to buy filament for those though I'm looking into recycling my supports and such.
3. Business costs - I have several businesses, 1 does very well, 1 does occasionally ok and 1 is a money pit. My plan is to put basically nothing new except filing, registration, accounting costs into the less successful businesses again. If they cannot make enough money to cover their own costs I'll be shutting them down.

Normal spending

1. Sports - I play hockey and I do powerlifting. So I have membership fees for hockey, coaching and gym fees for powerlifting and I'll be keeping both of those.
2. Gifts - I put a side $100-150 per month for gifts I don't see that changing
3. Utilities - I will be making some changes to try and cut down in this area but I'm not going to be focusing too much on it. I live in a rental where I can't do things like improve the insulation to reduce heating/cooling costs.

And thats it. I'm hoping tightening up on some areas and fully cancelling a few things I'm hoping to add an extra $1000-1500 per month to my debt repayments.

SELL ALL THE THINGS

I'm a bit of a shopaholic. That's just orders too, each order is probably on average 3 things and thats just one retailer. My house is full of lots of things I really needed but then never used and a lot of them were quite expensive!

I've actually knocked through a bunch of these so there isn't much left but I'll do another post with a full inventory at some point but here are a few examples of things I've sold in the past 6 months.

1. Ninja creami ice cream maker - Sold for $200 and spent $80 to buy an attachment for my Kitchenaid
2. Driving simulator setup - I don't really like driving real cars, I have no idea why I believed virtual car racing would be a hobby I'd love
3. Concept2 rowerg - I used to love rowing in the gym but once I got one in my house I was far less likely to actually use it. My new house never had a great space to put it either, over 18 months I put 73k on it.
4. Peloton - This actually made me money. I bought the full Peloton package on a 0% plan several years ago. After $300 in repayments the company announced they were pulling out of Australia and writing off all their debt. I sold it for several times what I paid for it and replaced it with a $200 cheap bike from Amazon.

Make more money

Lastly I have at least one new business I'm in the process of launching https://startwith.love. It's pretty much ready to go live and I have enough stock to cover a bunch of sales before it needs to buy anything else so my goal is to sell out of my current stock by the end of the year.

It's basic really

As the title says there is nothing earth shattering here. I'm going to spent less, keep less and try to earn more but I really believe these simple steps will be enough to clear my debts and get me back on the right track of enjoying what I have not what I want.

Shawn