Breaking up with Amazon & big box stores: Our month-long experiment
You know about Dry January, right? It’s where you give up alcohol for the first month of the year. This idea inspired our own challenge, and in March, we each gave up a specific type of spending to see what would happen. For Cassidy, that meant cutting out Amazon completely, while Emily challenged herself to shop only at local businesses for all discretionary purchases. We called it Dry March and recorded everything to share in this episode.
What began as a money experiment revealed a lot about convenience, community, connection, and the hidden mental load of modern shopping habits.
In this episode:
📌 Time Stamps:
[00:03:00] Cassidy's surprising discoveries about her Amazon habits and subscriptions
[00:07:00] The financial and psychological impact of abandoning the convenience of one-click shopping
[00:17:00] How shopping locally helped deepen Emily's connection to her community
[00:27:00] The unexpected challenges of maintaining spending limitations while traveling
[00:32:00] What surprised us during and after this challenge
[00:34:00] What's next for our spending habits after the challenge
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Transcript
Emily: Are you drowning in money questions but too embarrassed to ask? Tired of scrolling endlessly through conflicting financial advice that leaves you more confused than when you started? Welcome to the Finance Girlies podcast, your cozy corner for all things finance. I'm your host, Emily.
Cassidy: And I'm your host, Cassidy. We're both finance writers for brands like Forbes Advisor, USA Today Blueprint, and Yahoo Finance. Throughout our careers and personal lives, we have come to one realization. When we keep our money worries to ourselves, we end up feeling alone.
That's why each episode, we tackle those burning questions you've been afraid to ask with no judgment, no jargon, just real talk about real money. Ready to finally get answers? Let's dive in.
Welcome back to another episode of the Finance Girlies. Today, we are talking about a dry March challenge we did [00:01:00] last month. And just for some context, you've probably heard of dry January, right? It's where you cut out alcohol for the month and just kind of see what happens. Well, we wanted to do something like that for the month of March, but with spending.
Emily: We called it Dry March, and the idea was to challenge ourselves to cut out one kind of spending that feels hard to give up. But we wanted it to be something we knew we'd feel proud of ourselves for cutting out if we actually did it.
Cassidy: And we didn't want to make it about saving money necessarily, though that did end up happening too. It was more about pausing a habit we rely on and seeing what shifts.
Emily: For Cassidy, that meant cutting out Amazon, and for me, it was cutting out non-local stores. I don't use Amazon a ton, so I wanted to challenge myself to just shop local for the month.
Cassidy: And real quick before we dive in, we've been hearing from a few of you that you didn't know that we had a Substack, which is totally fair because we have not talked about it at all on the podcast.
Emily: But we're fixing that now. Our Substack is basically our home base for the Finance Girlies. You can find our latest episodes, show notes, and even our email [00:02:00] newsletter there.
Cassidy: Plus, if you ever want to reply to an episode or just come hang out in the comments or even subscribe to our Substack so you can get updates about future episodes, that is the best place to do it. We are at thefinancegirlies.substack.com or you can just search the Finance Girlies on Substack and we'll pop up.
Emily: Awesome. Let's get into the episode.
Cassidy: Okay, so maybe first we should talk about why we picked our challenges. And I will start. When Emily pitched the idea of doing a dry March, I knew immediately that I had to give up Amazon because we use it for everything in our household. I live near Seattle, so a lot of stuff shows up the same day or the next day. And it's so convenient that it almost doesn't feel real.
Like, for example, this has happened on several occasions where it's 8 p.m. and I'm like, oh, yeah, I wanted to do laundry tomorrow, but we're out of laundry detergent. So a lot of times I can just order it and it would be on my doorstep between like 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. [00:03:00] the next day, which is amazing, but also kind of a problem because I just began to rely on it for anything.
I would be like, why go out to a store and try to find this item when it can just be here in like the next 6 to ten hours? Yeah.
But eventually it kind of became a crutch too, because sometimes in order to get same day delivery, you would need to spend like a $25 minimum. And suddenly I was like throwing extra things in the cart to try to get it here super quickly.
And I always added items that we would use eventually, but I didn't need it right then. So when you're doing that a few times a month, it definitely adds up. And just to give you some context on how heavily we were using Amazon as a household, we had 21 Amazon orders in January alone, and we had 12 in February and we had a few hundred—I didn't look up the exact number for 2024 as a whole but I feel confident it was a few hundred orders total. So heavy users.
Emily: Yeah. And I [00:04:00] decided to do a shop local challenge for any discretionary purchases. I didn't feel like the Amazon challenge would be hard enough for me because I rarely use Amazon. I really just use it when it's the only option. It's not because I'm a saint.
Cassidy: Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are.
Emily: But because I prefer shopping in person and where I live, there is no same day delivery. There is no next day delivery. There is not even two-day delivery. So what's the point? And also, I don't like Amazon and Jeff Bezos doesn't need my money. So that too, and I really love shopping local when possible. I want to feel like I'm part of my community and support the small businesses here and often I think it's a way to buy better quality products as well. And I think unlike you in some ways, I felt like my challenge wasn't a way to save money, necessarily. I thought I even [00:05:00] might end up spending more because of it, but I felt okay about that for one month because of my other intentions.
Cassidy: I just want to go ahead and say I feel like you're rubbing off on me in the best way possible because as you describe your train of thought already with wanting to support your local community, I feel that in my bones now more than ever. And I feel like that is just from having so many conversations with you about how we spend our money and stuff.
Emily: I love that.
Cassidy: So you're a good influence.
Emily: Nice. Okay, let's hear how your Amazon challenge went.
Cassidy: I'll start with the math and then we can get into more of the details. So we had a lot of Subscribe and Save like subscription set up with Amazon and not all of those are getting delivered every single month. So I'll start with the math and say that if I hadn't canceled any of my Amazon Subscribe and Save orders, I would have spent $276.51 in March just for subscriptions.
And that would have been my probiotics, [00:06:00] toothpaste, cat food, cat supplements, and deodorant. But instead, I only repurchased the stuff I actually ran out of during the month. And I bought them locally, like at my local grocery store or also directly from the website of these manufacturers.
So I spent $206.57 total. So that's about $70 less. And I spent that money on probiotics, cat food, and toothpaste. So of the five Subscribe and Save purchases I was supposed to get, I only actually needed three of them this month. But I think that in all I actually saved way more than $70 because there are so many things I probably would have bought on top of those subscriptions had I still been using Amazon. Like, for example, I've been meaning to buy a new pair of tennis shoes. I've been thinking about getting a side table for the couch.
We also had two guests stay with us this month and normally I would have ordered maybe a few little [00:07:00] like, things for their guest room just to make it cozier and more homey in there. But because I wasn't shopping at Amazon, none of that felt urgent. And it's not that I won't buy those things necessarily. It's just that I didn't impulse buy them now because it was super convenient to get.
So even though I saved $70 for March on paper, I think I actually saved a lot more just by slowing down and not defaulting to something that could get here like, within the next day or so.
Emily: Yeah. When you like, add more friction to the process, it just makes you think twice before buying something.
Cassidy: Yeah. And it really made me really hone in on what's a need versus a want. Because I think when things are very convenient, it's easy to be like, well, this is a need. So like, I'll just go ahead and get it right now. But whenever you have to actually go out and find it, you're like, do I actually need this thing? Or will I be fine without it for a little while longer?
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Or for me, it's often [00:08:00] like, do I have another version of this that will work in the meantime?
Cassidy: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Do you want, like a full list of all the subscriptions that I canceled? Because we had way more of them than I thought. So like I said, these weren't just going to be delivered in March. These are just all of the subscriptions we had.
But we had Amazon Subscribe and Save set up for cat food, cat supplements, Litter Genie refills, Greenie cat treats for the cats, Tide detergent, laundry boost powder, my face sunscreen, my shampoo, my toothpaste, my deodorant, my lotion, and then the probiotics that I take every day.
Emily: Your cats take up a big chunk of that list, actually.
Cassidy: They really do. And the funny thing is so many of these items that I had subscriptions for, we have so much of this stuff already stockpiled at home. Like their Litter Genie refills. I was just going through a cabinet the other day and found like six of them stuffed [00:09:00] in a container from when we moved. I think I was just like, quick trying to stuff things and stuff when we moved last year. And I found six of them. And I was like, girl, you don't need more of these. You got plenty.
Emily: Wow.
Cassidy: But going back to the things that I had to repurchase this month, I was a little shocked at how the prices compared because I don't know what your logic is, but in my mind, I'm like, things are usually a little cheaper on Amazon.
Emily: Yeah, I would. That's kind of how I think too.
Cassidy: Yeah. So I thought everything that I would be buying in person would be more expensive. That was my train of thought going into it. So, of the items that I did end up buying, I think everything in all kind of evened out, which made me happy.
For example, cat food was about the same. My local pet store also has a punch card where you get like every 13th bag free, which you're not going to find that on Amazon. So maybe it works out to be a little bit cheaper. Plus everyone in the store is so darling and [00:10:00] they know me by name and they're like, are you here to get your cat food? Like how are your cats doing? So it's so cute. And I feel so warm inside when I leave there, which once again, you can't purchase that feeling on Amazon.
Emily: Right.
Cassidy: My probiotics that I buy, I bought them directly from the manufacturer's website, and they actually ended up being a little bit cheaper. They were like $5 cheaper per bottle.
That was surprising. The thing, though, that got me that I'm still honestly a little upset about is toothpaste. On Amazon, I would buy a three-pack of toothpaste for $12 and some change. And I found the same exact toothpaste that I use at my local grocery store and it was $10.99 for one tube. So I used to get a three pack for $12 and one single tube was $10.99.
Emily: That's wild. I wonder why.
Cassidy: I know. Which I do shop at a local grocery store. There's only like [00:11:00] 10 of them in our area. And so I do wonder if I went to more of like, a Fred Meyer or some like, national chain grocery store if it would be cheaper. But that did sting a little bit. And I was like, we will not be paying almost triple the price for this toothpaste.
Emily: I wonder if, like, Costco has it at a similar price as Amazon.
Cassidy: Yeah. Honestly, do you have a Costco membership?
Emily: Mm-hmm.
Cassidy: Okay. And you found that it's beneficial even as, like, a two-person household?
Emily: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.
Cassidy: Okay. Maybe I should look into it more. I've never had a Costco membership, but I'm feeling a little bit of FOMO right now with, like, all the Costco stuff that's going on. I feel like people are standing for Costco.
Emily: Yeah, it's time to stand with Costco.
Cassidy: Ditch the Amazon, stand with Costco. A lot of times I couldn't see myself buying a lot of food in bulk. For [00:12:00] example, I've only been inside of a Costco once and the only thing I remember is seeing a gallon-sized tub of mayonnaise and being like, this place will never be for me.
Emily: Yeah, quick tangent because I know your pantry habits are to keep the bare minimum. But let me just share a few things we buy at Costco. So I make granola every week for breakfast. So I get the big tub of maple syrup because I use half a cup of that every single week. And like a few other like, food staples that we use all the time, like olive oil tends to be much cheaper.
But then like, I don't know, we've gotten really good deals on like electric toothbrushes. You know, those aren't things we'll buy again and again, but like we got a great deal on them. A few like car products like windshield wipers and floor mats for really great prices, just like some household items like towels, bath towels, things like that. So and the gas, the gas is always a good deal, and tires actually, I'll throw that in there. So, yeah, [00:13:00] it’s more than just the food, for sure.
Cassidy: Yeah, that's really good to know, because I was going to say, I feel like even with household items like laundry detergent, toothpaste, you know, even things like that, it would probably be worth it, because those things you could buy several of at a time.
Emily: Yeah.
Cassidy: It'd be fine. Toilet paper.
Emily: Oh yeah, we get that.
Cassidy: Paper towels. Things like that. But yeah, I didn't realize they also had a lot of automotive stuff.
Emily: Yeah. My husband has, like, recently been a big fan of Costco's automotive stuff. Yeah. For his birthday or Christmas, I don't remember, he got like, a, one of those like, tiny little gadgets that you can use to jump your car without needing to do, like, jumper cables with another car. Yeah. Amazing. He loves it. Used it the other day.
Cassidy: No, this is good to know because we bought one of those years ago on Amazon. And I'm like, if I wouldn't have gotten this from Amazon, I have no [00:14:00] idea where I would have purchased it from. But it sounds like Costco has a lot of this stuff. And also, it is a really great purchase. To have one of these little things that can jumpstart your car without another car, it just, it's so tiny. It's like the size of a book, maybe, and some change. If you do not have one of those, it will give you so much peace of mind when you drive, just knowing that if your car ever doesn't start, you have everything you need to jump it off yourself.
Every single time I drive, I'm like, I'm so glad I have this thing.
Emily: Do you also have one, okay, we're getting really off topic, but
Cassidy: Yeah we are. It’s fine
Emily: Real quick. Do you have one of the little handheld air compressors too for your tires?
Cassidy: No.
Emily: Okay, that has come in handy also for us because I keep driving over nails for some reason.
Cassidy: Oh, no.
Emily: So, anyway, also got it at Costco.
Cassidy: Costco. One more thing about Costco. Just a little idea for David in the future not that he's not going to listen to this episode and potentially hear it. But I keep getting [00:15:00] Instagram reels about people who like, throw their partner's surprise birthday parties in Costco where you're like walking around and then all of a sudden they run into like 20 people that they know and they're like, we're here for your birthday. And then they go to the food court and stuff and just make it a really fun day.
Emily: Aww. Wow, I love that. I've never heard of that. That is cute.
Cassidy: Yeah.
Emily: Okay, I'll save everything else for our Costco episode.
Cassidy: I love it. We're going to have an update where it's like, Cassidy's gotten her Costco membership.
Okay, the one thing that I have not repurchased yet that I used to get from Amazon all the time that I'm kind of nervous about is my body lotion. And I've talked to you about this before. I have very dry skin. I use this one very specific lotion that I usually only buy on Amazon. So I was like, where am I going to get this lotion from in the future? I don't know.
But I did some research and I do think that there is a Fred Meyer near my house that has the same lotion for like a dollar more. So I am going to go check it [00:16:00] out. But that is the one thing where honestly in the back of my mind, I was like, thank God I didn't run out of this lotion in March because I don't know where I would have bought it if I needed it during this challenge. But yeah, I will be repurchasing that soon. But hopefully just from a local grocery store.
Emily: Do you want to talk about, like, how it felt kind of doing all these workarounds all month and resisting the urge to buy things on Amazon?
Cassidy: I think the biggest thing that I noticed was that I did not feel the urge to shop online nearly as much as I did before. Because before, if I thought about leggings or thought about socks or thought about a random household thing, I would just open up Amazon and be like, I'm curious to see what's available. And then I would get flooded with a million options and I would spend an hour comparing and then I would probably add something to my cart just to try.
But now I'm like, eh, I'll wait until I really need it or see if I find it in a store nearby or something like that. So that was one benefit. I also really liked that [00:17:00] because I wasn't relying on Amazon, I was forced to go into town, which might sound annoying to some people, but it actually really helped me feel more connected to where I live because I have only lived in this city for 10 months and there are a lot of stores that I just haven't checked out yet for whatever reason because I haven't needed to find a place to buy laundry detergent and I haven't needed to find a place to buy cat food and stuff like that.
And so it helped me feel more like a local in a way. I also, I really do love having like little interactions with cashiers or if I would walk someplace for something, you know, seeing a dog and getting to like, pet the dog on my way. It just really brightened my day and I loved it a lot.
It reminded me of the, like, Kurt, and I don't know how to say his last name.
Emily: Vonnegut?
Cassidy: Vonnegut? Okay. We'll call him Kurt Vonnegut quote. This quote was recently brought up in a group thread that Emily and I are in by our friend Megan, but [00:18:00] Kurt talks about how he's a writer and he would just go out to buy one single envelope at a time. And one day his wife was like, why don't you just buy a box of envelopes? Like then you'll, you won't need to go out every day to buy one. And he talked about how the joy isn't in the envelope but it's just about being out in the world, how he likes seeing people and asking someone about their dog and giving a thumbs up to a fire truck.
And he just talked about like, all the little joys and delights of just like, moving our body and getting outside and like having these little interactions and like the spark that they bring to your everyday. And so I think that quote also really stuck with me throughout this challenge. And so that felt really good.
Emily: I love that, and I feel the same way. This idea, similar idea, came up at my book club the other night. We read a book called Lily and Boxfish Takes a Walk, and it's about this 85-year-old woman who on New Year's Eve, like, takes this 10-mile walk around New [00:19:00] York City and, like, just meets all these strangers and all of these little stories of her past kind of pop up throughout the book. But yeah, we were kind of just talking about the same thing like those little mini interactions you have when you like, just put yourself in places with other people.
Cassidy: Yeah, I think these interactions mean so much to me because during peak COVID, because I work from home, my spouse works from home, there would be weeks where like we would go out to get groceries on Sunday, but I would be inside my house until like Saturday, that next Saturday maybe.
And that happened for months and months on end. And now that I've had like all of these other little interactions throughout my day and week and stuff, they really do so much, I think, for like, my mental health and my joy. Just knowing that other people exist and seeing other people be outside too. I'm like, this [00:20:00] is really good for you.
One more thing in just like the how I felt space, I was also really surprised at how much mental space I got back specifically with Amazon subscriptions because in the back of my head I was always trying to time things just right, like do we actually need more of this or am I about to get another shipment of something we already have three backups of? Am I going to miss the email being like hey, your subscription is going to renew in five days like adjust your order now before it's too late. Like am I going to miss that email? So canceling everything just meant I didn't have to make those decisions at all. If I ran out of something, I could rebuy it and if I didn't run out of it, then I didn't think about it once and that just felt really simple and freeing.
Emily: Yeah, that just sounds like a relief to not have to. I've had like, a much smaller version of that experience with dog food. We like, did a recurring subscription for that through [00:21:00] Chewy and, yeah, we got like I swear a new bag when we had like. essentially a full bag still left to go and we do not have a ton of extra storage space so it was, it was annoying.
Cassidy: Yeah. I do Subscribe and Save for the cats’ litter through Chewy. And even that, like hearing you say that, I'm like, should I just cancel that? I think they just get me with the Subscribe and Saves. Like the frugal part of my brain is like, you can save, even if it's 50 cents or a dollar. I'm like, that adds up over time. Of course I'm going to Subscribe and Save. But then a lot of times like you, I either get cat litter when I absolutely don't need more or I'm desperately needing more and just trying to wait to get here. So either way, I'm stressed in some capacity. So I don't know.
Emily: Yeah. And then you end up going to the store because it's not going to get there in time. You misjudged it.
Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the bigger lesson here is that I don't want to do Subscribe and Save for a lot of things. [00:22:00] They're not as convenient as they're advertised to be.
Emily: I agree. Maybe I'm going to cancel mine. We'll see. I'll update you.
Cassidy: But do we want to get into your experience now?
Emily: Yes. So unlike you, I didn't keep track of prices for everything. Instead, I just kept track of all my discretionary spending for the month and noted whether I succeeded in shopping local. So one little caveat, I use some gift cards throughout the month that were not local, not for local stores or businesses.
So in some ways I felt like I cheated because I used those to buy certain things. But you pointed out helpfully that the money was already spent. I was not giving these businesses any more money. I was just taking their inventory. So, I'm going to call that cool for this challenge.
Cassidy: And also, you didn't give them your money to begin with. That came [00:23:00] from whoever gave you the gift card. So, yeah. All good.
Emily: That is true. Okay. So, I don't have a ton, a ton of discretionary purchases for the month, but I'll try to go through them pretty quickly. Okay. So one of my first or the first changes I made early in the month, I was with my husband and sister-in-law and we were going to get coffee. We were about to stop at a drive-thru chain and I was like, stop, we have to go somewhere local.
And we did, we changed plans, went to this cute local shop. I did pay like $8 for my coffee, but it was really good, way better than it would have been at the chain. And it's always fun to go into a local coffee shop. This was not in my area. It was out of town. But, you know, like look at all the flyers of things going on in the town and had a nice interaction with the barista, etc. So, that was purchase number [00:24:00] one.
Also on that trip, we ate out, ate dinner out with friends at a local restaurant. So that was another win. Unfortunately on the way home from this trip it was a big road trip, like, 10 hours. We stopped at Chipotle on the way home and I do love Chipotle, and it just felt like it's just so easy when you're like on the road for hours and hours to pull off and just have something right there that you know you're gonna like.
Then this, this was not my fault. I'm sticking to it. I went to Joann's Fabrics which as some of you may know they're all closing and so I went to get some good deals on fabric and yarn and I had a gift card. However, Joann’s stopped accepting gift cards, apparently, at the end of January or something, or February, I don't know. And so I ended up spending a bunch [00:25:00] of money that I did not plan to spend, and I'm still mad about it.
Cassidy: That makes me livid for you, that you got up to the register and handed them your gift card, and they said, we're not accepting gift cards anymore.
Emily: I was just dumbstruck.
Cassidy: For real! In what world?
Emily: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I was, yeah, it really put a bad taste in my mouth.
Cassidy: I also just want to pause here and acknowledge the fact that I was like, I'm just not going to use this one store for a month. But your equivalent challenge was you being like, I'm only going to visit a locally owned place for my money. Like, it is so hardcore and so admirable. And it makes me love you so much.
Because just reading through this thing, I'm picturing you being in the car and you telling your family, wait! We can't go through this chain coffee station. Like I've made a promise to myself that I'm only going to shop local this month. [00:26:00] And so they like you all found another coffee shop. It is just the cutest, most darling thing ever. Please continue. But I'm loving it.
Emily: Well, okay, thank you. But this was just discretionary spending. So like groceries, other things. I did not change my habits. But a few other local purchases, I shopped at my local bookstore, got takeout from a local restaurant, did yoga, the studio downtown, got dinner again at a local place.
And then I was again out of town and went to what I thought was a local coffee shop. But then I later found out it was a chain based in Florida. I live nowhere near Florida that is not local. My bad.
Cassidy: Do you remember the name of it? Do you remember the name?
Emily: Yeah, Foxtail.
Cassidy: Never heard of it.
Emily: Yeah, it was in this part of town that like has all these cute little local shops and I just, I had never heard of it [00:27:00] before I just assumed but no. It was really good coffee though, we'll say.
And then we went on vacation across the country so we flew and spent money on breakfast after landing and we had woken up at like 3:30 in the morning and I was starving and we did not take the time to find a local restaurant for breakfast so we went to this big western chain which ended up being delicious but it was not local.
I did better throughout the rest of that trip though. Got ice cream at a local place. Went to the local bookstore, coffee shop, outdoor store. Got some dinners out. Bought several like, entry passes into state parks and other recreation areas, rented e-bikes from a local small business, bought a handmade ceramic mug at a local art gallery, did Uber Eats for the first time in my life but we [00:28:00] got, we ordered from a local Mediterranean restaurant. This was at, like the hotel airport the night before we left.
Yeah, so I think that counts.
Cassidy: Yeah, definitely.
Emily: And then on the way home spent money at various airport chains, you know how it is. So missed that one and then ended the month at the local brewery for my book club. So all in all, definitely the majority of my purchases, discretionary purchases succeeded at being local, but there were a few, mostly my whole gift card mix up and then food while traveling. That is where I missed the mark.
Cassidy: And honestly the one where you thought you went to a local coffee shop and didn't, I would say that counts too, you had every intention of going to a local coffee shop.
Emily: Yeah.
Cassidy: So quick side question.
Emily: Yeah.
Cassidy: You said this was your first time doing Uber Eats. Have you ever [00:29:00] done DoorDash or anything? What? This was your first food delivery app experience, period.
Emily: Actually, it's funny because we dropped off our rental car the day before we flew out because we can save the money by returning it early. And we had a really early flight the next day in a shuttle from our hotel, so we didn't need it. But we needed to get dinner. And so before we dropped off the car, we asked the hotel. We were like are there any restaurants that will deliver here? And they were like there's this thing called Uber Eats where you can basically get anything delivered here. And they probably thought we were like 70 because this was over the phone. I don't know. Anyway, we were like oh yeah that's a thing because neither of us had ever used it before.
But I think that might just be due to the fact that we live in a small town and have lived in small [00:30:00] towns for all of our adult lives. And so, yeah, I think it's just not as much of a thing.
Cassidy: Hilarious.
Emily: Okay, so getting into some price comparisons. Again, I didn't really track my spending versus hypothetical spending I would have had at big box stores or chains because I was okay with the idea of spending more. And in some instances, I know I did. Like, for example, that fancy $8 latte from that local cafe was more than I would have spent at a chain. And I probably also spent more on books from local bookstores than I would have online. But I am 100% okay with that because I love local bookstores.
And then some things felt just like break-even, like restaurants, yoga studio. I don't feel like I necessarily spent more on those things than I would have. Well, actually, one more thing on the financial front. I do think I maybe did save money like when I [00:31:00] think about not spending on extra things because I did have this, like, filter this month of, is this thing necessary? Yes or no? If not, am I willing to do the work to go buy it locally?
So like in a normal month, sometimes I'll pick up an extra thing here or there at the grocery store, like a candle or like recently I was looking to replace a winter hat that I didn't absolutely need because I have other winter hats. But I didn't do that kind of thing this month because of this challenge. So I'm sure I saved some money in that way.
Cassidy: I was going to say... It really is shocking whenever you just tell yourself mentally like this store or this type of store is off limits for me. Just how your brain quits even considering it as an option. And I think just because you have fewer options available to you, like you just spend less money because you're not even thinking about it as a possibility.
Emily: Right. Yeah. And like you, it was nice not having to like, make that decision of [00:32:00] like, should I buy this thing? It was just easy. Nope. Like, I don't need it. And if I really want it, I'm going to have to find it somewhere else. So, like you, I think that freed up some mental space.
Cassidy: Yeah.
Emily: So what surprised you about the challenge?
Cassidy: I think the thing that surprised me the most honestly was just how easy it was. Like going into this I thought, I use Amazon for so many different things. Like there's no way I'm gonna be able to go a full month without using it for something. But I don't know, I, this challenge has me thinking I could probably do it, you know? Like I used to think a Prime subscription was absolutely worth it, like a non-negotiable, something you're gonna pay for every year.
But now that I've stepped back, I don't really miss it. And I could see myself canceling it and never thinking twice about it, especially if I did replace it with an equivalent like Costco, for example. It's not a perfect substitute, but I do feel like it could be close enough for all of those kind of weird things that you're not just going to find at [00:33:00] like a big box store.
Emily: Right.
Cassidy: I guess Costco is a big box store, but you know what I mean.
Emily: Yeah, yeah. But it allows you to get those deals on things that if you buy them individually at the grocery store, they're definitely going to be more expensive.
Cassidy: What about for you? What surprised you the most?
Emily: Well, it definitely didn't feel too different from a normal month, which is great. But I did realize, like, I can't do this forever. Like, for instance, I need to buy some new t-shirts. And I had this thought during the month, like, well, I'll just wait till next month because I don't think I'm going to be able to find that locally. Like, just what I'm looking for. I mean, maybe at a consignment shop, but I know the options would be more limited and it would probably take many visits to like, find what I'm looking for.
The other thing I didn't quite expect or plan for was I ended up traveling quite a bit this month, more than normal and it was much [00:34:00] harder to stick to local businesses while traveling because like I said when you're on the road and you just want to make a quick stop it is so easy and convenient to pick a place, you know, for food or coffee whatever that you know has what you want and it's like right off the highway, easy to do and like I said sometimes you don't know what's local and what's not.
Cassidy: Yeah, yeah. I still think though, all things considering, you did such an amazing job with this challenge. Especially considering like there were big travel days like a 10-hour road trip, a flight to a different state. There was traveling traveling going on in your world and you still I would say had like a 90% success rate.
Emily: Thank you.
Cassidy: You did great.
Emily: You too. So are you going to keep going with dry Amazon?
Cassidy: Here's my thinking. I would love to be able to say, like, I'm going to swear off Amazon forever. It will never get another penny from me. [00:35:00] I don't know how realistic that is, so I'm not going to make that promise. But I do think that you have the perfect mindset with places like Amazon where it's like I will search all other avenues. And if there is no better place, then I will resort to this.
So like off the top of my head, I don't have any plans on using Amazon again anytime soon. But I'm not going to say that there won't, like something won't pop up where I'm just like, I really don't know where I'm going to find this thing. So I'm going to have to do it on Amazon. But I will put in a good faith effort to find it somewhere else first.
Emily: Nice.
Cassidy: Yeah. What about you?
Emily: Well, I want to like hold on to the mindset of shopping local when possible. But like I said, I definitely can't do it always. There are some things that I'll need to buy online or from big box stores. And like, I'm still going to go to Chipotle on road trips for [00:36:00] lunch. But I do like the way I've been thinking for the past month. And I do just kind of want to get into the habit of making local choices when possible.
Cassidy: I also want to add the caveat here. I feel like the lines can get blurred so easily because some franchise stores are owned locally. And I kind of think that Chipotle is one, but I don't know. But it's like you could be supporting a local-ish business by supporting a place like Chipotle.
You and I have also talked about, like, all the small businesses that are on Amazon and it's like, well, if you're boycotting Amazon completely, I own a small business and most of my traffic comes from Amazon. So it's like, I don't know. So what's the workaround to that? And then you and I talked about how you could always search for something on Amazon. And then if that is a smaller local business and you can try to go like directly to their website or something to make your purchase, so you can still use Amazon like a search engine of sorts. So, like, there, there are some great [00:37:00] areas as to like, should I be spending my money here? Is it necessarily bad or whatever? So yeah.
Emily: Yeah, I did wonder about that franchise thing too, especially some of the restaurants I went to. But yeah, bit of a gray area.
Cassidy: But yeah, I also think just in reflecting back on this challenge that even though I thought that I was really good at being intentional with my spending and I still think that I am, I think that convenience still made me spend more without thinking. Or just made me spend more quickly than I would if I had like a forced thing that didn't make that purchase as easy to get.
So I do think similar to you, like I want to continue using this as a filter and as a way to be more intentional and also just as a way of using up more of what I already have, right? Like going through the stockpile of subscriptions that have come when I didn't need them or going back to the lotion thing. It's like my preferred lotion I used to buy from Amazon anytime I ran low, but I do [00:38:00] have other lotions that I've tried in the past and didn't love but still works. It's like should I work my way through those before I go out and buy more of my favorite lotion and that's just one tiny example, but just using that mindset of, let me see what I already have around me before I, like, go out and buy this other thing.
Emily: Yeah, similar to that, I, like I said earlier, I ended up using a bunch of gift cards this month that I had laying around and in a way that kind of felt like using things up that otherwise may have been forgotten or wasted. So that was a good feeling.
Yeah, and then on the note of convenience, shopping locally isn't always convenient, but I also love a reason to go into my small town and recognize the bookseller or the barista or support a new local restaurant. And I think like you, that's especially true because I work from [00:39:00] home and it's easy to feel disconnected from the community. So just choosing to like, go into town and shop in a store is just a good way I feel like, for me to feel a little more connected.
Cassidy: I totally, totally agree. So in closing, like I said, Emily pitched this idea to me maybe back in January or February. I was instantly game for it. And I loved that we did this because it just shifted my spending habits a little bit and caused me to reflect more. A lot of good came from it.
And so if you wanted to try a similar challenge, we're just curious to know honestly what you would give up if you did your own version of dry March maybe for April or May or whenever. Would it be Amazon? Would it be Target? Would it be Starbucks? Would it be takeout? Is there anything that's coming to mind where you're like, ooh if I cut this thing out for a month it would be challenging but also kind of cool to see what happened?
So if you have an idea, it's okay if you don't, but [00:40:00] we would love to hear them. Our email address is hello at thefinancegirlies.com or you can message or comment on this episode on Substack. But we would love to hear from you and interact with you.
Emily: See you next week.
That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.
Cassidy: Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Love you. Bye.
