Hello everybody, I’m Sayunkta Jain. I actually just came here as a favour to my team. I mean, I like shopping. Is there anything so wrong with that? I mean, the stores are put there to enjoy. The experience is enjoyable. Well, more than enjoyable… it’s beautiful. The sheer joy you feel when you’ve bought something and it’s just you and the shopping. All you’ve to do is hand over your little card. Isn’t it the best feeling in the world?
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Okay, enough with the Rebecca Bloomwood card. I may not speak Prada like her but I do tend to shop a lot. Especially during sale seasons. And I also like to order food. Sometimes, that happens twice a day. But to paraphrase Becky, underwear food is a basic human right!
That said, when our Founder & CEO, Priyanka Gill, learned about my boxes of daily deliveries from Zara, POPxo, H&M and Zomato to name a few, she challenged me to not spend money on anything for a week. And if you’ve been following POPxo’s Instagram, you know I took the #POPxoNoSpendChallenge and that it ends today.
What Is The #POPxoNoSpendChallenge?
The challenge was to not swipe my card on shopping for fashion and food, the two things I recklessly spend on. I was allowed to spend on transportation though and that’s about it! Below are further details of the challenge and a glimpse into the most difficult seven days of my 2020 life… only one month in.
Given that January is the ultimate sale season, especially for me because my birthday falls in February, spending the last week of the month and missing out on all the up to 70% off discounts and deals was tough. On top of that, I didn’t have the support of my favourite dishes because of ^^^! But all’s well that ends well…right?
How Much Money I Saved
As I’m writing, I’m also booking my birthday trip because I managed to save just the amount I needed to book my Goa itinerary! Less than a month ago, I had used up a big chunk of my savings on a week-long trip to Malaysia. But all it took me was one week worth of savings, during the oh-so-luring sale season, to be able to plan Goa the way I wanted.
Cutting to the chase, in this one week, I managed to spend only Rs 80, that too on transportation to come and go from my house to the Shuttl stop. I won’t bore you with my average weekly expenses but I’ll tell you this–if I hadn’t taken the challenge, I would have spent around Rs 10,000 this week alone to shop for clothes on sale, shoes, accessories and whatnot. So, I saved 10k thanks to the #POPxoNoSpendChallenge.
Here’s how I pulled it off.
Day 1
I started by deleting all the shopping and food apps from my phone to avoid getting tempted. Even though the first day was easy, parting ways with my favourite online stores wasn’t.
Day 2
On the second, I concentrated on my food habits and realised just how used to I had gotten to ordering-in, despite bringing lunch from home every day. So, I brought more than my usual tiffin box and munched on ghar ka khana whenever I felt the need to order food.
Day 3
I won’t lie, the third day was hard. Looking at people ordering-in and discussing Zara’s annual sale was not easy on me. I felt tempted to re-download the app and at least check out what I was missing. But that seemed like dangerous territory. So, I asked for helpful tips on self-control and…
Day 4
…got a solution that helped keep me going. Read on to know what it was. Spoiler alert: I have a new perspective on life and it has made me less anxious.
Day 5
This was a Friday which meant bye keeping-me-busy-all-day work schedule and hello free time. Knowing myself, weekends are my weak points when I’m alone and browsing through shopping apps like Instagram. They end up being the most expensive days for me. So, day five went in coming up with a plan to distract me from my vice.
Day 6
Enter a movie marathon! I picked my all-time favourite series, Harry Potter which meant 20 hours from my weekend gone. It was magic, no pun intended! I ate yummy food, put on a sheet mask and binged and binged. Also, I took naps and not the set-an-alarm kind, the fun kind!
Day 7
And now we are in the present. After my morning workout, I finished watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and am now feeling proud of myself for how I handled this week of #POPxoNoSpendChallenge.
People kept on coming to me all week saying that they couldn’t have taken the challenge because it sounds too hard. But I’ve one thing to say to all – it feels pretty darn good when you can actually measure your success and, in this case, see it in your hands. Instead of spending money on clothes that I’d probably wear a few times, I’m splurging on a birthday trip to Goa, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way. So, give yourself such small breaks and challenge yourself. It feels really good at the end and no one can take that away from you. 🙂