Spend Less On Consumables.

The second half of my spending doctrine.

One of the first articles I wrote for Cinq Personnes was on why I think people should spend more on many everyday items, from desk chairs, to clothing, and maybe even toilets.

I wanted to follow that up with a new article on spending less on things that we consume — well, at least most of the time. I was partly inspired to do this because someone pointed out that while “spend more, less frequently”, and “buy something new when something breaks” work well for long lifespan everyday goods, but they don’t really translate to consumables — from personal care items, to batteries, and food (which is a big category which I will address at the end).

“Consumables”

The first thing that needs to be said for consumables is that you should really try to reduce their use to the greatest extent possible. This is going to be different for everyone, but the people who happily boast about using disposable plates and cutlery at every meal show us the anti-pattern.

There are a lot of classes of things which, with a small amount of effort, we can never consume again, or consume far less of. For example, replacing paper plates and plastic cutlery with long-lasting and hard-wearing washable alternatives, replacing the remaining disposable batteries in our lives with rechargeable ones (particularly relevant if you have kids!), and opting for products with less packaging.

A lot of applications where maximum battery life isn’t needed really should maintain mechanisms to let people swap in new batteries, with strong discouragement from using disposable units, and maybe the ability to charge the batteries within the device. This would let us “decouple” the consumable from the (hopefully) long-lasting shell around it.

I find it really remarkable to see certain political factions in countries like Canada fight moves to reduce packaging, and where possible swap to less impactful consumables — i.e. biodegradable straws, because this is wasteful and extremely short-termist.

If something you regularly dispose of feels particularly wasteful, there is probably a better alternative that exists out there (and we might actually use “Spend More on the Everyday” on it). For example, swapping disposable razors for a rechargeable shaver (plug-in would be even better), or best of all a safety razor. The place where this seems hardest is toothbrushes, but there are even types of toothbrush that have swappable heads that at least let you reduce the waste, but hey — at least you can replace string floss with a plug-in water flosser! (You can also reduce toilet paper consumption with a bidet, and reduce fossil fuel consumption with an electric stovetop or an electric car — though of course public transport, cycling, or walking are better). As you might have noticed, there is a lot of overlap in reducing your consumption of needless products and packaging and a sort of environmentalist view on this topic, and that’s rational: buying a product that is going to be barely used before it’s thrown away or literally combusted is obviously not economically efficient when alternatives exist.

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Once you’ve either reduced or eliminated as many consumables as you can, I think it’s worth comparing the logic I use for Non-Consumables vs. Consumables.

Non-Consumables

• Potentially Long-Lasting

• Heavily-Used

• Infrequent Purchases

Consumables

• Longevity matters only insofar as it lets you use less of the Consumable - for example, rechargeable batteries are still consumable, but by spending more on them, you can use them much longer and save money.

• Some Consumables are very lightly used, like for example Q-Tips or shaving lotion — in the sense that you use it to fulfil a job, and then you dispose of it.

• To the extent that a Consumable is consumed rapidly, you will purchase it much more frequently, to some extent this means that unlike say: a pair of pants, you don’t really need to research what is best, you can test various products and figure out which works best for you and your circumstances.

What you have left should not be a large group of things. For me it’s mostly just stuff like Q-Tips and shaving lotion. Once you have the true disposable items nailed down, I think it’s best to just go for a no-name store brand option. I find typically the amount of “innovation” in products designed to be disposed of is very low (and where it does exist is mostly a ploy to get you to buy a “brand” product and has dubious value) so you don’t gain from not buying store brand (theres a good chance it’s nearly indiscernable from the “brand” product too) and the difference can be funnelled towards spending on the everyday where those dollars, or pounds, or yen can go much further.

“Food”

Food is a consumable, but it’s different in some key ways from other consumables; well mostly, to be fair. Some food items are probably not so different — for example, you should probably just buy generic salt, and generic vegetables.

However, it’s more complicated than this — the food we eat comes both from restaurants and cafes out of the home, and the meals we make ourselves at home, and the dynamics of each are different. Of course, some city dwellers get take out or eat out for all of their meals (in parts of Asia this might actually even make financial sense!), and some people don’t really eat out at all; most people are probably somewhere in the middle.

Eating Out

Eating out is one of life’s great pleasures, however it can also be incredibly expensive. Here’s how I try to enjoy getting meals out of the house without spending half my salary on them.

First and foremost, I set a target monthly spend. This is not a large number, but it is not so constrained that I can’t have a couple nice meals out each month (it could be more constrained if needed), or a bunch of cafe visits and one or two meals out. I mention that it is a target spend, because I think it’s a bit silly to punish yourself for spending $4 too much when eating out is only a small fraction of your income, but this also means you should be undercutting the budget sometimes.

Once you have that budget, I think there’s a lot of value in finding value spots, or spots that are conducive to value enjoyment. There is a pastry restaurant all over Toronto that I quite like that works well for this: I can get a pastry and “go out” and meet with someone for about $6, which is a lot less than I would spend on lunch, even though we probably can talk more if we don’t spend all our time ordering and eating! While obviously fine dining is expensive, and McDonalds is inexpensive (though I hear this has changed somewhat), it’s amazing the extent to which most food in the middle has a weak correlation between the quality and quantity of the food, and the price.

With restaurants, it can be helpful to keep the explore-exploit paradigm in mind. It’s fun to go around to new places and try different things, but I think people are often biased towards this. Finding a place where you can be a “regular” lets you optimize for value and quality even if it’s a lot less novel. Frequenting a local business also has the added benefit of potentially meeting new and interesting people, and making friends who live near you.

It’s also helpful to keep in mind why you are getting a meal out, your priorities around value, and explore-exploit may change based on this. Some meals out are about an experience, and experiences make value a little less important and novelty a little more; sometimes you’re eating out because it’s quick, convenient and easy, and you’re probably going to care more about value in these situations.

It’s also the case that many people have this idea of eating out that is not universal. For example, a lot of people I know always get some sort of drink at dinner, but I seldom do, and if I do it never includes alcohol. Similarly, I’m not a coffee drinker, and so at a cafe I will enjoy a pastry, but that’s usually it. In the cafe case, this makes the “meal” about half as expensive as it would be if I got some grandiose drink, and for dinner it means saving about one-third the cost. Of course, you should pay for your meal with a credit card that gives you a lot of points for doing so — assuming you can be responsible with a credit card.

One thing which has been true for me in the past, and may be true for you, is that if you are careful about giving yourself access to unhealthy foods (by say not keeping bags of chips around at home), then eating out may become a sort of release valve for this. The solution here is to either work up the will to control the urge to eat stuff like this, or (and this is ok in moderation — moderation is just hard) keep some treats at home and be strict with your consumption — but, be happy you’re saving money.

Now, a big reason I am writing this is someone was telling me how hard it is to save money on food when working from the office, which is fair enough — I almost never packed a lunch when I was working from the office. But, the reality is, you can just pack a lunch. I think one way to make your life easier would be to bundle stuff that you might usually eat anyways together based on whether it travels well, and bring that as your “lunch”. I understand people have a lot of dogma in their life about what their meals should look like and when they should have them — but you’re an adult and can eat what and when you want, you just have to live with any actual consequences. Basically what I’m saying is I often find myself eating some yogurt, cereal, and a granola bar for lunch, and if eating breakfast foods for lunch is the price of not spending money at a restaurant I will do that.

And this transitions us nicely into…

Food At Home

The reality is you need food to live, and while I don’t really think you need to get non-generic food for many things, the reality is you shouldn’t ever deprive yourself of nutrients, and you usually shouldn’t deprive yourself of taste — unless that just means unhealthy food.

A principle that can be helpful is just being intentional about what you eat. Personally I find that distinguishing a sort of general hunger from a craving for some particular (and probably more expensive) food helps. Usually I want less (amazing) s’more cookies, if I’ve eaten a proper meal first.

It’s also a simplification to say it, but saving money on groceries is basically limited to shopping around (I find Asian grocery stores to be particularly good), which may or may not be expensive in time terms, and doesn’t always yield that much in terms of actual savings. You could try to eat less and waste less, but thats obviously a your mileage may vary situation. Of course, it’s helpful to remember that eating at home in most developed western countries is a lot more cost effective than eating out, so if you hate eating at home and that pushes you to eat out more then you might be saving less than you think.

Anyways, these are the thoughts I had. I’d love to hear what people think in the comments, and if you haven’t, subscribe!