10 Things I'm Not Buying in 2021 (Tips for Saving Money)

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Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! In this video, I'm going to be talking about 10 things I'm specifically not buying in 2021 in an attempt to save a little bit more money. Now, I actually really do enjoy watching the videos that other finance YouTubers make on how they're going about saving money and what they're cutting out of their budget. So, I thought I'd make the same video. Definitely not all 10 of these are going to be applicable to everyone, but I hope that maybe there's one or two things in there that you can take away from this video and go, "Actually, maybe I could cut that out of my budget," and it would help you save potentially hundreds of dollars per year, if not thousands of dollars with some of these tips.

So, let's get stuck into it! The first thing I'm specifically not going to be buying in 2021 is meat. Now I actually haven't bought meat from the supermarket in well over a year now, and that's what I really try and do. Because I'm not a vegetarian and I'm not a vegan, but I do generally think that we should be reducing our meat consumption. So, I made an agreement to myself that when I go to the supermarket, I don't buy meat.

So yes, when I go out with friends and I want to enjoy myself and have a good meal, you know, I don't really want to spend 20, 25 dollars to buy a salad. I think a lot of you guys could probably resonate with me on that one. I still love a good chicken burger or that sort of thing, but generally speaking, from day to day, you know, weekday meals, I don't eat meat and I don't buy meat.

Now, I actually had a look at some of the statistics behind Australian meat consumption, and it's pretty remarkable. In fact, in 2016 (so yes, the data's a little bit old, but it's the best we got), we spent 12.6 billion dollars on meat, which equated to 1,518 dollars per Australian household per year. So, one and a half grand per household just on meat. So, you know, it's not that hard to reduce your meat consumption. You don't necessarily have to go without it, but just reducing your meat consumption can save a lot of money. So that's definitely number one.

Then moving on to number two, the second thing I'm not buying in 2021 is a gym membership. And this one's specific to me. I mean, it can be specific to everyone because you don't need a gym to stay fit and stay healthy. But for me personally, when I was like 16, 17, I made the choice to become a Les Mills group fitness instructor, which was quite beneficial to me at the time when I wasn't making a lot of money. Because number one, you get paid for exercising, which is fantastic, and secondly, wherever you work, you don't have to pay for a gym membership to access the gym facilities.

So, I work at a couple of different gyms, you know; I do a couple of classes around the place, and I just get free gym access to all of those gyms, which obviously helps me keep fit. It turns out like gym memberships, annual gym memberships these days can go well into like over a thousand dollars per year—thousand dollars just to be able to go to the gym. So, there you go; there's certainly money to be saved there. There are so many public park resources, gyms, you know, you could buy a bike, all sorts of stuff. You know, you could just go for a run. Nothing better than just going for a run with the headphones in listening to some music. So, you definitely don't need to pay money to stay fit.

Anyway, the third thing I'm not going to be buying in 2021, this one would probably be more specific to me, and this one is fuel. I'm not going to be buying fuel in 2021. That is of course because I've just bought my Model 3. Oh, I love that car! It's so good! I'm having an absolute blast driving that thing around. I literally want to go out and drive places. I've never felt that way before; I hate driving normally, but my Model 3 autopilot is going great! And of course, one of the good things about electric vehicles is, well, first of all, they don't really require any servicing, but you're also filling up on electricity.

So, filling up on electricity is heaps cheaper than filling up on fuel. Whether you're supercharging or whether you're just plugging it in at home and just running off the electricity grid, it's still a hell of a lot cheaper. It will literally save me hundreds of dollars per year just by owning that car. And that's not even including the reduced cost of servicing. So, obviously, Teslas very rarely need servicing, and I totally encourage you if you're someone that's on the fence with an electric car or specifically a Tesla, take the leap! I mean, I did it, and I'm absolutely having a blast. It is a fantastic car; I absolutely love it! So, you know, give it a go! A referral link down in the description below if you want 1,500 kilometers of free supercharging.

Anyway, moving on, the fourth thing I'm not buying this year is a new phone. Oh, I hate people that get sucked into this trap of buying the latest, greatest phone every single year. The reason I really dislike this mentality, this habit now, is because I feel like back in the day, upgrading from like Samsung Galaxy S2 to an S3 there was a massive improvement; like they were iterating very quickly making massive changes from year to year. Now, going from an iPhone 11 to an iPhone 12, it's only very small incremental increases in functionality.

So, and you're definitely paying through your teeth. I mean, your phone loses value, then you have to pay that, you know, new phone premium, I suppose. So, I'm certainly like, I'm running a Pixel 3, which is getting a little bit old now. It's a great phone, but it's getting a little bit old, and yes, I'm getting these software updates now, and my battery now seems to last half the time that it used to, which is kind of funny because, you know, they always say these companies—they say, "Oh, we're doing it to protect your battery." Well, I've got like one of the original iPods that I still use to run my fitness classes with; that battery has not had any software updates, or that iPod has not had any software updates in a very, very, very long time.

I just don't think they support the software updates. That battery is still running fantastic; it still holds a really good charge! So, when these phone companies say, "Oh, we're just going to protect your battery by reducing the lifetime of your phone," yeah, I'm calling BS on that one. Anyway, don't buy a new phone every year; it's a waste of money—that's the point.

Next up, this is something that I've never bought, but I thought I would chuck it in here because there's some really interesting facts around this. I'm not going to be buying cigarettes in 2021. Now have a listen to this: like I don't want to downplay the idea of addiction here; I definitely realize that for a lot of people smoking is an addiction, and it is hard to overcome, but there's definitely something to be said that there is a massive economic cost to smoking, and if you're a smoker, you are really disadvantaging yourself financially.

So have a listen to this—this is a very interesting tidbit I got from an article here: "Australian smokers will need to fork out an extra 12.5 percent for their cigarettes from Tuesday, first September"—this was last year—"as the tobacco excise increases. Successive tax hikes from April 2010 have pushed the price of cigarettes higher, with today's hike meaning a 25-pack of Marlboro Gold cigarettes will cost fifty cents while the average 20-pack will cost around thirty-five dollars." Over the course of a year, that means a pack-a-day smoker will literally burn through twelve thousand five hundred dollars! And that's pretty crazy.

There are still a fair few Australians that are smokers—yes, thank goodness the number is going down, the percentage of the population that smokes is going down, thank goodness—because essentially it's just like giving yourself cancer. But how crazy is that? If you're a pack-a-day smoker—and I know a couple of people that are a pack-a-day smoker—that's going to set you back 12 and a half grand every single year! That is insane! Imagine what you could do with 12 and a half grand! You could do so much; you could buy multiple TVs, you could update your computer, get a new Xbox, you could do whatever you wanted. For a lot of people, they could pay a fair chunk of their annual rent cost.

But yeah, obviously, I definitely do not want to downplay the idea of addiction and how hard it is for people to get off smoking. But there is definitely something to be said; if you can do it, then you are going to benefit financially a lot. Okay, moving on to the sixth thing that I'm not going to be buying in 2021: it's sale items I don't need. Oh, I have fallen for this one a couple of times. You know, "Oh, Black Friday! Oh, I might get that. Oh, I might get that." "Oh, I don't really need that, but yeah, let's get it as well." I'm going to stop doing that!

What I'm going to do from now on—and I have done this in the past, but I've kind of fallen out of the habit—anything that I want or need, I'm just going to write down a list, besides, you know, things like groceries and week-to-week stuff. But if there's something that I want for maybe YouTube or I want to upgrade my computer, or I want the new Xbox, I'll just write it down on a list, okay? And you know, I'm not trying to scrooge myself out of anything. Like, I'll still buy things that I want to buy, but I'll make a list of things that I really want and things that I don't really want and don't really need.

And then when the sale comes up, then I'll buy specifically those items and nothing else, okay? Because yes, you got to remember: like if you have a big sale, say you don't need a new TV, but you see this big sale—thousand dollar TV reduced to five hundred dollars—and you decide to buy that TV, you haven't saved five hundred dollars; you've spent five hundred dollars. Yes, you can argue, "Oh, the TV was worth a thousand, now it's 500." At the end of the day, you just spent 500, and if you didn't need to, then it's 500 that could have been in investments, in your pocket, in your bank, you know, paying off your mortgage, etc.

So definitely step number six for me personally: I'm not going to be buying sale items that I don't need that aren't on my list. Anyway, moving on, the next thing—seventh thing I'm not going to be doing in 2021 is buying books that I don't really want. I'm surprised, actually; a lot of books can be quite expensive. Like I used to think a book could be like 15, 20 bucks; now some books are like 35, 40, 50 dollars. And you know, I end up walking into a bookstore or something like that and I'll buy this book and I'm like, "Oh, maybe I'd like to buy that one as well while I'm here. I may as well pick it up," and then I end up just never reading it.

So definitely, I'm only buying books that I'm actually going to read now. I don't think you should be too much of a scrooge with books because especially like non-fiction—I'm a big fan of non-fiction stuff where you actually learn things from the time you put into reading it. So, I'm not too much of a scrooge, but I definitely think if you're someone that goes into the bookstore and buys like 10 books and then you really only want to read two of them, there's a cost that you can definitely cut out.

Anyway, moving on, the eighth thing I'm not going to be buying in 2021 is flights. Yes, partly because we really can't fly anywhere. Well, we can fly domestically, but we can't really go overseas at the moment. But also, I'm not going to be flying because I'm going to be driving my Model 3 around. This is kind of like a deal I've made to myself, you know: if I'm going to go somewhere, let's drive in the Tesla. You know, it's so much more environmentally friendly to get from A to B.

Even if A is Canberra and B is the Gold Coast, as I did recently; I went to the Gold Coast. But yeah, I'm definitely going to look to avoid flying if I can. I'm going to drive the car instead, fill up on electrons, and that can power me to wherever I need to go. Anyway, the ninth thing I'm not going to be buying in 2021 is formal wear. Now, I don't really go anywhere where I need formal wear, but I know a lot of people that seem to buy expensive clothes or formal professional-looking clothes, and they just wear that, you know, day to day when they really don't need to.

I don't know, maybe this is just a personal preference kind of thing, but I don't go anywhere. Like I could be wearing a suit and tie while I record these YouTube videos; you know I'm talking about finance and money saving. But to be honest, I kind of look at YouTubers that wear really fancy clothes in their videos and I'm like, "This seems fake." So, I don't really need to wear formal wear for anything; I don't really go to these fancy events or anything like that.

So, it's just an easy one where I just don't have to buy it. I'm not going to buy it. I'm not going to be one of those people that just wants to look a million dollars every single day of the week when really all you're doing is sitting around your lounge room maybe playing video games. Definitely, that's just definitely not me. So formal wear, yeah, not for me in 2021. Maybe if I need to go to some event, I might invest in, you know, a suit or something. I've only got one suit; that's it! That's the full extent of my formal wear. The rest are t-shirts, pants, chinos, whatever. I've only got one suit, and I've probably worn it once in the last five years.

So there you go. Anyway, moving on, the tenth thing I'm not going to buy—I put this one last because a lot of you guys are going to disagree with me on this one—I'm not going to be buying coffee. Now I've never been a coffee drinker, but I know a lot of people are, and they really get hooked on, you know, they need to wake up and they need their coffees. I've kind of taken the approach: just never start! You know, if you'd never start, you'll never know what you're missing out on, and you'll save a lot of money in the process. Kind of like alcohol, I guess. You just never start; you never know what you're missing.

So that's definitely one for me: I don't buy coffee from the supermarket, I don't buy instant coffee, I don't buy coffee when I go out. I just avoid it altogether. I literally do find I have no trouble, you know, getting up in the morning and getting to work. I feel like you definitely just grow used to needing that one-a-day coffee; your body's almost like, "Oh, I need it, I need it," when really if you never start, you just don't know!

So that's going to be the tenth thing, and overall they are my 10 things that I'm not specifically going to be buying in 2021. I hope that maybe you got something out of this video. The last thing that I kind of wanted to touch on as well is that while I talk about money saving, you know, being frugal—while that's definitely very helpful, I also want to just come back to that idea, which I’m very happy to see more people talk about now—that while saving money is a great habit to get into, for the majority of people in life, it's going to be much more effective if you focus less on saving money and more on making money.

I think that's really important; something that I've learned from my own experience over the past three or so years. It's definitely fine if you're someone that's, you know, trapped in the rat race. You've got a massive mortgage, you've got kids to feed, you know, you're, you know, 40, 50, whatever, and you've maybe only got 10 years to retirement. Okay, maybe it's more about saving money for you.

Maybe you just, you know, you're setting your job, you're setting your career, you're getting a healthy income, you're not going to change anything drastic. Then it is about saving money. But if you're someone that's young and maybe you don't really have all that many expenses that you could potentially cut, then it's going to be much, much more beneficial for you to focus your time and focus your energy on making more money. Whatever it is: more hours at work, second job, side hustle, start your own business, whatever it might be.

I have found personally from my own experience, it really pays off financially if you focus more time on making more money. Yes, saving money is nice; yes, being frugal is nice. But in the long run, if you're going to devote a lot of time onto one of the two, focus your time on trying to make more money.

But anyway, it's still great to be frugal; it's still a very good habit to have. And of course, a dollar saved is a dollar earned. So, they are the 10 things that I'm not going to be buying in 2021.

Anyway guys, that will do for this video. Leave a like on it if you enjoyed, and let me know what are some of the things maybe you're cutting out of your budget in 2021 for you personally. So, I definitely don't expect that you'll agree with all the 10 that I've put down, but I'd love to hear kind of get a variety of different opinions on things here and there that you're cutting out that are going to help you save money. I'd love to hear it, so let me know down in the comment section below.

Check out Profitful links down in the description below if you'd like to learn about how I go about my stock market investing. But that would just about do us for today, guys. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next video.

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