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Hey, guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet.

And this week, I wanted to talk to you about eight things that you should cut out of your budget for just one month. Our friend Erin from Broke Millennial is actually in the middle of a no spend month as we speak. And even though she's someone whose entire life is centered around being better with money, she's already slipped up several times.

And while it definitely can be very beneficial to do a total spending freeze, it's also just not very feasible for most of us. So if you're looking for specific things to cut out, these are great places to start that are a little bit more painless. You can try and do them all, or you can pick a few from this list that might really help you.

And before I get started, I just want to say to anyone in the comments whose comment is going to be "I don't buy that thing," then that point is not for you. I've never dyed my hair in my life, for example. But many, many women do.

And that is a hugely expensive beauty regime for them in many cases if they're doing it at a salon. And if I were to watch a video in which someone suggested doing a home hair dye, I would not write a comment saying,. I don't dye my hair.

I would understand that that comment is not for me. Anyway, without further ado, let's jump right into it. Number one is a snack with your daily coffee.

Now if you are someone who likes to grab a coffee on your way to work, which is I would say sometimes my case, although I try to be really good about bringing coffee in a travel mug from home, it is extremely tempting to get that extra snack item on top of your coffee. And the problem is that so many of the healthy snacks that you could get at a coffee shop, like, for example, Starbucks, things like hard-boiled eggs, hummus and veggies, a fruit cup, yogurt, et cetera, are stuff that are perfect to bring from home. Maybe you can't perfectly recreate that latte or cappuccino you love, but there is nothing stopping you from bringing yourself a little Tupperware full of hummus and some veggies or a bunch of cut-up fruit.

And when you're doing that in bulk at home and, let's say, meal prepping that favorite coffee shop snack for yourself, you are almost certainly going to be paying literal pennies on the dollar for what you would pay in a prepackaged item. Now, obviously, the typical personal finance advice here is just don't buy coffee outside the home, which, OK, but for many of us, that is just not realistic. Sometimes, I forget my coffee.

Sometimes, I'm just really craving a coffee that's difficult to make from home. Or sometimes, I want a second coffee item after I've already finished my first one that I did bring from home. If coffee shop visits are a part of your life, it's much more realistic to insist that you limit them to just that coffee item.

And when you're telling yourself that you're going to eliminate all those extra snacks you might be picking up and instead bringing them from home, you may find that that eliminates your desire to go to the coffee shop anyway. The point is you can keep some of the indulgences that make your work life happy and productive without making them overindulgent. Number two is any hair, skin, bath, or body product.

Now there's a couple points here that we should really hit on. The first thing is that as we've mentioned in previous videos, it is very likely that you are washing your hair too frequently. And aside from the water that wastes and the damage that potentially does to your hair by over-stripping it of its natural oils, it also means you're buying shampoo way too frequently.

And similarly with soaps and skin products, it's often the case that we'll go out and buy another item before we've totally finished the previous one, whether it's because we want to try something new or because we can't quite remember if we finished it at home when we're out shopping. Committing to yourself that for a month, you will not replace any item until you have completely used it all the way to the bottom, and more importantly, you are only using it as much as you realistically should be using it, you might be shocked at how much money you'll save if you are someone who, like many of us, I imagine, tends to drop by the Sephora or the Duane Reade beauty section a little bit more than you should. Yes, obviously, keeping clean and moisturized are necessities, but they are also things that we don't need to be doing as often as the companies selling these products would like us to believe.

And on a similar note, number three is makeup. So if you are a young woman with an active Instagram account, chances are you've been targeted literally thousands of times over the years with Instagram beauty accounts that are always showing off these really intricate and beautiful-looking makeup looks, telling you about the latest trends or shilling products that are apparently a must-have, even though you didn't know they existed a week ago. Now I am someone who would never judge a woman for considering makeup a necessity of her day-to-day life.

For many of us, tasteful makeup at work can be the difference between being taken and treated seriously at work or not really. Whether we like it or not, we tend to think that women who go totally bare-faced look like there's something maybe medically wrong with them. And while you may not personally choose to wear makeup, it's also something that I would never say is an unnecessary spending category.

That being said, the difference between your necessary maintenance makeup and all that extra stuff that you might be dying to pick up after you saw it on some blogger is very different. Identifying the core items you need for your daily routine, and sticking only to those for a month, and committing to only getting a little bit more creative with the stuff you already have on your makeup shelf will not only challenge you to use the products that you maybe don't use so often, but will also show you whether or not you really want that extra item when you have to wait a whole month to get it. I've personally found that since getting a Birchbox,.

I have really satisfied that little part of my brain that's always wanting to hop on new trends. Usually, the products are quite small so they give me just enough of that, like, maybe I'll love this. Maybe I won't.

And 9 times out of 10, I don't love the product. It allowed me to test out trends like the highlighter on your cheekbones, which when you're really pale like I am just kind of makes you look like the corpse bride, and more importantly taught me that just because something might look great on a beauty blogger does not mean anything about how it will look on me. So doing at least one no spend makeup month might teach you the same things about what's really worth purchasing.

Number four is novelty food products. Now by novelty food products, I mean the stuff that you just do not need in your daily rotation, but you're buying because you saw it at the store or maybe again on some Instagram, and it set off that part of your brain about, like, ooh, wow, that looks really cool. Creating a month where you only buy the necessary foundational items on a grocery list and do not give yourself permission to be distracted or tempted with really novelty, interesting-looking purchases when you're at the store may teach you that, a, you don't really need those chips made out of some really weird grain you've never heard of and, b, reminds you that half the time when you buy those novelty food products, you don't end up loving them anyway.

I'm personally very susceptible to the really fancy imported yogurts that they have at the nice grocery store near me. And I realize that when I'm being honest with myself, it's really 90% the packaging of those items which is always super, like, minimalist and Nordic and considered. And yes, a cup of that Skyr is only like a couple dollars, but a couple dollars that I don't need to be spending and I don't miss when I don't.

A month of sticking to a basic grocery list might save you dozens or even potentially hundreds of dollars if you're someone who's liable to fill your cart with a bunch of stuff you don't need over the course of a month. Number five is clothing. Now, obviously, clothing is in life a bit of a necessity provided you don't live and work in a nudist colony.

But there is a very big difference between clothing in general being a necessity and all of those little items you're liable to pick up by justifying you need to build out your professional wardrobe as a necessity. The truth is nearly everyone watching this video could easily get away with one month of no clothing spending, not even just that little fast fashion shirt that caught your eye in a window on the way home. If you are someone like me who doesn't really love to clothing shop and isn't really attracted to designer labels, it can be easy to convince yourself that you're doing pretty well when it comes to not overspending on clothes.

But I could easily go to my closet and point out five things in one minute that I haven't worn in seasons or I don't really love. And obviously, there was a moment when. I bought that item thinking that it was justifiable in my overall budget even though looking back, I totally shouldn't have.

So if nothing else, you can use a month to just simply flag the items that you might want to buy and check in on it at the end of that month to see if you still love that item enough to justify the purchase. Chances are you'll have forgotten about that clothing item entirely. And if you do go look at it, there's no guarantee you're still going to want it.

One month without buying any new clothing doesn't just mean spending less money. It also means rethinking what you define as a need-to-have clothing purchase. Number six is anything brand name.

Now one of the easiest ways in which we can save money with the life we're already living while still making basically all of the same choices is for one month to commit to only buying generic brand things rather than the brand name. That's everything from over-the-counter medicines to cookies and cereals and chips that we like to cleaning products. Most generic products are required to meet the same production standards as their brand name counterparts.

And many times, the products inside those bottles or bags or boxes are actually the same products. You may find that switching to generic indefinitely on all of these products is not worth it, but you may find that with several of the things you buy, you didn't even notice the difference that you were consuming generic and could save yourself a ton of money going forward by making that choice on an ongoing basis. It's easy to just mindlessly pick up brand names because it's what we're used to seeing on commercials or it's what we had in our cabinets growing up, but every time you make the choice to get brand name rather than generic, it should be an active one made for a real reason, not just because it's what has the prettier label on it.

Challenging yourself to go all-generic for a month will serve as a reminder of how much that label really is just that. Number seven is alcohol with dinner. Now I don't know about you, but I'm definitely someone who when I go out to a restaurant for dinner,.

I always feel like it's part of the experience to order a glass of wine or a fun, fancy cocktail. But here in New York, a cocktail can literally run you $20, which in many cases is nearly the price of the entree. And more importantly, there's no need to drinking alcohol whenever you go out to dinner.

I know that there's part of it that makes it feel like more of a fun, adult, Sex and the City experience, but it makes going out instantly way more expensive, more caloric, and likely more packed with sugar and unnecessary other stuff. Now this obviously doesn't necessarily have to translate with no drinking at all for the month. But even just challenging yourself to not buy alcohol while going out to eat can, a, make those trips way less expensive but also, b, perhaps encourage you to eat at home more and make the home dinner a more fancy, fun, restaurant-feeling experience.

I'm someone who really loves home cooking and maybe even more importantly loves making a really beautiful and indulgent experience at home, which for me translates into going out to eat for dinner way, way less often. I don't feel like I have to go spend restaurant money to get a restaurant-quality experience. And a lot of times, that can just mean taking a minute to light some candles on the table, arrange the food nicely, set out beautiful plates and glasses, and just really enjoy the experience rather than feeling like home dining means just get it done.

The more we can stop thinking of the restaurant experience as the time when we really get to indulge and home dining as something we just do to get food in our mouths, the more we can make this a balanced and budget-friendly part of our overall budget. Trying to limit to no drinking when out at restaurants can go a long way into making that a reality. And number eight is Ubers or taxis.

Now I feel even guilty talking about this point because I am someone who is definitely guilty of it herself. I live in New York City. So realistically, the trains run 24 hours.

I always if I wanted to could take a subway or a bus home. But there are just times when it's easier either coming home late or when I have a lot of shopping bags or it's pouring rain out to just grab a cab. And I have done months before where.

I have not taken a taxi or an Uber the entire time. And while I'm not doing it this month, it's always an easy way for me not just to save some quick money off the top of my budget, but also rethink the way I travel. It makes me walk more.

It makes me get more familiar with the subway system. It makes me take buses I've never taken before. And more importantly, it makes me realize that what I think of in the moment as a bit of a necessity is totally a luxury.

Now no matter which of these items or perhaps even all of them could apply to your life, remember that you don't have to go on some no spend crash diet to make meaningful changes in your budget and to rethink a lot of your day-to-day habits that may have just become totally ingrained. Our spending is linked to every life choice that we make. And being more conscious about one can have huge impacts on the others.

And if you're looking for more ways to live a beautiful but budget-friendly life, you should follow The Financial Diet on Instagram. Look how beautiful it is. We're always posting tips, tricks, and inspiration on living a money-friendly life.

And you can follow it right down at the link in the description or by going to @TheFinancialDiet on Instagram. It might serve as a nice antidote to all those bloggers constantly telling you to buy things. As always, guys, thank you for watching and don't forget to hit the Subscribe button and to come back every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for new and awesome videos.

Bye. .