March is over, and each month this year I’m trying to do a “low buy month.” This is not the same as a “no buy” month or year, where you truly don’t buy anything but the essentials. I didn’t feel like I could go that extreme, so I’m just trying to examine each purchase I make and consider how much I need it. It’s a little more subjective, but it’s what’s working for me this year. While February was a big success, March was a rough month in terms of our budget. I didn’t feel like I bought anything we didn’t really need; the problem was that a lot of things we needed came up!

Low Buy Year | March 2025 Budget Recap

Last year I did a series of monthly posts with questions to ask yourself about your budget at the end of each month. For more of an explanation of our low buy year, please see my January 2025 budget recap.

The first step in looking back at a month is seeing how much we spent on discretionary categories like kid expenses, groceries and other household items, eating out, gas, and the dangerous “miscellaneous” category. Our budget software lets me look at trends, which is really helpful. I cut our discretionary spending by about 37% in January 2025 compared to 2024. In February, I cut it by 42%—even better! However, in March 2025, our discretionary spending went up by quite a bit. We spent about 20% more in March than we did in February.

Now let’s look at some of the things we bought as part of our low-buy month, which didn’t feel like much of a low-buy month at all.

What we bought / spent money on in March 2025

• New shoes for two kids
• A replacement blender cup and blade
• A new water bottle for a kid
• Car phone charger
• Fees for my husband’s new phone

None of these things were extremely expensive, but when you add them up together, it ended up accounting for several hundred dollars. This was not money we had been planning on spending, and while we had the money, we had to move it from other parts of our budget.

On one hand, it’s a good feeling to know we have the money for unexpected expenses. But every time we have to move money around, it means that we are experiencing at least a minor setback in part of our budget. At some point, we’ll have to funnel extra money into that category.

Even though this month wasn’t as low spend as I wanted it to be, I’m not going to give up. I’m moving into April with renewed motivation to keep spending low!

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