NO to iPod, iPhone and now, the iPad. My mac computer is 6 years old and I’ll be replacing it this fall only because I am forced to. No to living in more than 1000 sq ft. No to SUV. No to Prius. No to foreign cars (I love my 44mpg Ford Focus). NO to european travel (America was built by europeans. I admire their work here on American soil). NO to amusement parks or any park that charges an admission. No to Blockbuster, Netflix. No to paying for a haircut more than 2x a year. NO to Cable, satelite or any kind of pay TV. NO to Avatar. NO to movie tickets. NO to brand names. NO to paying for music downloads (iTunes radio is free). NO to overeating (portion control) NO to sin taxed items. NO to new clothes. NO to shopping retail. NO to repair men/women (DIY instead). NO to dog groomers. NO to hotels, B&B’s (exchange friends homes instead for free). NO to ink (paperless now). NO to tuition (I sit in class for free). NO to U.S. Post Office stamps & snail mail. NO to annuals (only perennials). NO to dying my hair. NO to expensive beauty products. No to pedicures, manicures and massages (cousin is a massage therapist and we barter instead). NO to buying p.j’s (I sew them instead, out of flannel remnants). NO to all processed food. NO to meat more than 6X a year. NO to buying books, even cookbooks, magazines or newspapers. NO NO NO to fast food ever! NO to pizzarias (make my own, instead). NO to BUYING water. NO to soda, store bought drinks etc. etc. (I make my own ice tea, coffee, lemonade and pump water out of my own well-via reverse osmosis). NO to private pools (use free community pool, free lakes & oceans). NO NO NO to anyone who flaunts any type of wealth in front of my face. NO NO NO to debt, credit cards, mortgage, car loans, student loans, payday loans, loan sharks, store credit cards etc. etc. NO NO NO to a 9 to 5 job. NO to any appointment before 1PM (I must wake up naturally) No to any alarm clock. NO to any watch or clock for that matter. NO to dependent children after the age of 16. After that, they get their own jobs and buy their own ‘stuff’ (of course, I still support my children forever and ever….I just don’t have to foot the bill). NO to paying for kids college. NO to paying for their weddings (yes, I give them cash gifts. but basically, they’re on their own). NO to any Xmas gift over $25. NO to Xmas gifts other than the immediate family.

OMG! I can go on and on. I say ‘no’ to a lot of things. I hadn’t realized how much my life has changed over the years. For the better, I might add.

Next time, let’s do ‘yes’. I’d be curious.

Enough from me for now.

@morrison –
That is the most impressive NO list I think I’ve ever seen.

i say no to guest posts!

No to cell phone. Just gotta keep the list of people who want to call me very, very short. Generally I’m just not that hard to find.

Similarly, no to cell phone for my three teenagers. Two have jobs to pay for their own.

No to cable/satellite TV. What about the digital conversion last June? No to a new TV. That’s when we no longer watched.

No to debt, for anything. Hmm, maybe this should be moved to the top of the list.

No to stuff. I’ve been downsizing for twelve years or so, and there isn’t anything finer than less stuff. Unless it is having something you really want.

No to saying yes when you want to say no.

No to adding more to my list.

SAY NO TO ORGASMS AND SEX.

This one really fires people up. How long can you go without? Its a real challenge to do for nothing more than the principle of it. Self-control is a lost virtue. I dont want to be a slave to neither money, nor work, nor myself. Celibacy is sexual frugality maybe.

Hi Jacob!

What a timely request. One of your blogroll “friends”, The Spartan Student, has just published his second installment of “Images of Resourcefulness”. Lots of creative thinking on his part. Maybe your readers can offer him even more suggestions now that you’ve got them in “no” mood.

P.S. Love your blogroll. You have the best friends IMHO.

P.P.S. Maybe it’s easier to take up #9’s suggestion if you resemble a skunk!

@Regina – In the shortest possible terms. Those who want luxuries have typically grown up without them and now see it as their mission to have everything they didn’t have when they were young (or provide it to their children)—they are willing to work very hard for them too. Those who don’t want luxuries have had them at some point in their life but found that they did not bring satisfaction and the hassle outweighed the pleasure—they have typically never been involuntarily excluded from luxuries. Naturally there are other reasons, but I see those two a lot.

Regina / Jacob,

I can relate to that explanation – I grew up without luxuries and when I had my oldest child I wanted to give him everything that I didn’t have as a kid.
12 years later with the second one, I said “no” to that.

For a ~ 4 year period, I said “no” to shopping outside of groceries and necessities – didn’t go to a shopping mall because I realized my spending was out of control and I needed to detox. I can go to one now, but it makes me feel kind of puky.
Some other “nos” I’ve tried to live by:
NO to any living accommodation that I can’t make a profit from.
NO to any job that I can’t make more than 10x minimum wage.
NO to buying new clothes for work even though I only have a few suitable outfits.
NO to working overtime (this is just something I’ve done lately). Learn to work faster/more efficiently.
NO to annual vaccinations for my 16 yo cat.
NO to renting movies. NO to movie theaters.
NO to turning the thermostat on past April 1.
NO to A/C when I lived in Houston.
NO to hiring contractors to do renovations I can do myself.
Lots of NO’s, but not as many as the poster above. For the most part, I don’t like to be excessively rigid about things. This year, I will try to say NO to working to keep accumulating savings since I don’t seem to need to anymore.

Hi. As to my children-when they turned 16, both got jobs and bought their own music CD’s, trendy clothes…things like that. Of course, I provided food and shelter. Gosh, the ‘kids’ are in their 30’s now, and I still keep a room ready for them when they come to visit. When they turned 18 and wanted their own cars, DH found good older, but extremely safe models for them BUT they bought them ($800 or so) and paid their own insurance, gas, etc. My kids grew up to be the love and joy of my life. They both earn high 6 figure salaries, never once borrowed a dime from me and probably still have their first dollar earned. Neither one of them have credit card debt (but low cost 1-2% student loans).

As to my NO list-I also said NO to big screen TV. I am still using my 42inch TV that I purchased, for cash, back in 1995.
Every Saturday morning, my girls and I would get up early, clean our house together (I called it ‘spruce up day’) and then we would all head out to the library. In the summer we would all go to the (free) beach afterwards. The other seasons we would go to apple farms, museums, art galleries. I took them to their first opera (The Met) when they were still in their teens.

It was such a joy to see them balance out their own checkbooks while they were teenagers. They still shop at consignment shops. The other month my youngest sent me a 15% off coupon from Staples because she knew I needed Turbo Tax. We all split the cost and we all did our tax returns together.

I’m sorry if I am talking about my kids too much. In a few months, my youngest is getting married and she and her future husband paid for their own (cost effective) wedding without any parental assistance. All we parents have to do, is show up on the selected day!

Saying ‘NO’ to your children can do them a world of good, contrary to what we may have been brainwashed to believe. My children learned through example, honest discussions and by facing realities, what life was like. I had to work full time to pay the bills. I would prepare meals the night before, then the next day, at 4:30PM, my eldest would pop the prepared meal into the oven (we usually had roasted chicken) and by the time I got home at night, 6PM, we all sat down and ate our dinners together. NO TV. NO phone calls. NO distractions. NO video games (gameboy).

I hadn’t realized the awesome power of NO till I did this little experiment. Thanks, Jacob.

No to smoking. No to camera phones. No to trading stress for more money. No to passing up opportunities for awesome memories.

Hi guys,
I’d say:
NO to shoes
NO to cars (YES to RV)
NO to gym

…and cheers
Daniele

So, no to clothes during the summer months then?

organized religion, meat, alcohol, lottery tickets, tobacco, TV, fast food, waiting on children or husbands, illegal drugs, magazine subscriptions, paper delivery, sexual harassment, unethical workplaces, cooking and house cleaning when exhausted, racism, sexism and homophobia, high-healed shoes, mean people, sleep deprivation, more than one child.

How about no to clothes? save money, live free 😉

No to those stupid jewelry, make-up, cooking gadget, candle parties women subject one another to. No to my beagle who wants to eat constantly, No to stuffing your feelings– which only leads to compulsive behaviors of all kinds. No to spending my time with people who don’t have a clue. No to social isolation. No to living in a place where the sun only shines for a few months a year. No to being manipulated by your teenager to buy cellphones, extremely violent video games, and fast-food drive thru. No to those public school fundraisers that want you buy 3 lbs. of cookie dough for $15.00. But I do want to wear clothes.

I say no to alot of things. I couldn’t possibly tell you anything about the new cell phones. For months I thought Droid was a new model car or something! Mine is a pay as you go $20 phone. It makes and receives phones calls, so I can’t complain. The last time we had car payments, we bought a very reliable brand of car used with small payments and paid it off early. It has 140K miles on it now and runs fine. My car, I paid cash for it from an individual, it also has 140K miles on it now. We tried the one car thing and our schedules are too different — I was missing appointments, and he was missing time at work. It created more stress than it solved.

We don’t have cable or a land line. Our TV is a 32″ and we bought it used on Craiglist for next to nothing and works great. They guy didn’t like that the bottom of the screen had a few small scratches because of his kids playing with it, so he bought a new one. His loss, my gain! We do like to watch movies on it even though we don’t bother with cable tv.

It is just me, my husband and our 3 pets that we adore, so we rent a small place from a private landlord. We don’t eat out much and avoid chains, opting for local places when we want a night out.

Our hobbies are not cheap per se, but we have really prioritized them into being affordable. But, we do know how to have fun for cheap or free.

We buy used when we can. I’ve found Goodwill and thrift stores to be treasure troves of perfectly good items. Garage sales too. When my husband needed a new outfit for job interviews we got a really nice one for $7 at Goodwill. It would have been $14, but it was a 50% off the entire store day. That was awhile back and he still wears it to business appointments.

His family and mine are both very consumerist and we get ragged on all the time for our lifestyle. They don’t understand why we make the money we do and want to live like we make a fraction of that! We just don’t care anymore what they or anyone else says. They work and worry themselves to death about how they’re going to keep their nice, new pretty things. We don’t. So logically, I can’t help but think we’re doing just fine with our choices.

No to the mall (it gives me hives)
No to new furniture
No to new gadgets (we have plenty of those lurking around)
No to a new car and a car payment (why buy a new car after you pay the old one off, you are finally getting your money’s worth out of it!)

I wish there were more “no” items on my list but alas I have a spouse who is addicted to TV, Internet, gadgets (he is pretty good with everything else though)

Yes to kids (we have one and i could not even think of donating him at this point)
Yes to pets (they don’t really eat much and give me a great deal of joy)
Yes to new running sneakers (I am an avid runner)

I am in the process of downsizing our life a bit, paying down debt and we live fairly cheaply. Everyday is another day to do a little bit better and improve.