[Book Review] The Year of Less, by Cait Flanders

The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store
Author: Cait Flanders
Recording Artist: Cait Flanders
Publisher: Tantor Media
Year: 2017

I think it's fair to say that, for most people living in the so-called First World, the idea of going an entire year without purchasing anything but food and essentials is a pretty terrifying prospect. You're probably already tensed up just thinking about it. Not buying anything? No lattes to-go, no new video games or DVDs, no new outfits or tickets to movies or anything at all?! How would we live? What would we do? How could we survive the howling maelstrom of sensation that is the Internet Age without the ability to spend our hard-earned cash on the things that matter most to us, the things which give our lives so much fulfillment?

Well, that's just the issue, isn't it? What does matter most to us? Do our possessions bring us fulfillment? Do we even remember all the junk we've spent that hard-earned cash on? Lots of people run themselves ragged working jobs they hate so they can pay their bills every month, but are we paying for things that make us truly happy and secure? Or are we just flinging dollars away to keep the twin specters of Boredom and Silence at bay, like a cornered man hurling sausage-links at an approaching pack of wild dogs?

By her early twenties, Cait Flanders was (like many Americans and Canadians), up to her eyeballs in debt. More than $30,000 of debt, and almost all of it racked up to pay for things, possessions, physical objects which brought her no joy but she couldn't bear to get part with because she had spent so much on them already, and besides, someday she might use them! Add to this her binge-eating and compulsive blackout drinking (which started at age 12), and you've got one very unlikely candidate for future financial- and lifestyle-guru. But become a guru she did! This book chronicles how that came about.

Cait started blogging about her efforts to pay off her consumer debt as a way to keep herself accountable. Publicly sharing her budget and what she spent her money on forced her to stick to her principles and continually reach for her goals, or else face the unpleasant task of explaining to her readers why she had fallen short that month. Slowly, over the course of two years, she paid off her debt and built up a sizable online following. But she discovered that as soon as the debt was gone, the old habits came roaring back. She began to ask herself:

"If I was only saving up to 10 percent of my income, where was the rest of my money going? Why was I continually making excuses for my spending? Did I really need 90 percent of my income or could I live on less?"

Cait decided to find out, in the only way she knew how: by leaping in with both feet. She decided to challenge herself to give up shopping for an entire year, only allowing herself to buy the essentials: food, toiletries, gasoline, electricity, and other essential consumables. Among other things, she had a rule that she could only replace things that wore out or broke if both of the following applied: A) the item was absolutely essential and caused her a daily inconvenience to go without it, and B) she threw out, donated, or otherwise got rid of the original item she was replacing. Armed with a sense of purpose and spurred on by the fear of public shaming (she had told everyone she knew about her plan, so she wouldn't chicken out), Cait launched into a yearlong Shopping Ban.

Not only did Cait swear to go a year without shopping, she also decided to take stock of every item she owned and publish the inventory on her blog. Years before Marie Kondo was a phenomenon, Cait decided she'd had enough and ultimately gave away more than half of her possessions, on top of her Shopping Ban!

As the year wore on, Cait began to notice disturbing similarities in the way she related to her three vices: food, alcohol, and shopping. Although I've never had a serious problem with alcohol, shopping, or overeating, I still found that much of what she was saying resonated with me. For much of our twenties, my wife and I spent everything we earned on fancy dinners out, having adventures with friends, sweet treats and cups of overpriced coffee, and purchasing whatever passing fancy caught our attention for more than a moment. We were having fun, sure, but spending all that money was really just keeping us from achieving our goals, like owning a house or traveling.

Although we had already paid off the all of our remaining debt more than a year before encountering Ms. Flanders' book, The Year of Less has helped to reinforce and galvanize us in our decision to live frugally, to save as much as possible, and to not waste our money on anything that isn't getting us closer to checking items off our bucket-list. It's a difficult decision to make in a world where anything you want can be yours in seconds (and with free shipping if you spend just a few dollars more), but as Cait Flanders proves, it can be done.

And who knows? Maybe, like her, you'll find that you're happier with less than you ever were with more.