Not Buying It Review

Menu and grocery list will be posted later today or tomorrow. For now I wanted to write a review on the book Not Buying It by Judith Levine, which I wrote a little about last week.

I finished the book last night and have to say that I am disappointed by it. The book had too much scientific information about why consumers buy and not enough about Judith Levine's own challenge. She challenged herself to only buying necessary items for one year. Food was off limits of her challenge though and they were able to splurge on $60 for 4 lbs. of fish for a party, or specialty cheese, for example. They were also building onto their house (which in itself was not a necessity she admits, since they have enough space for two people but just wanted more instead of getting rid of items) and the costs of building materials (fancy clawfoot tub, closet organizers, etc.) weren't included in this challenge. Right there those two areas that weren't accounted for in the book made the challenge not work in my eyes. If you are truly going a year without buying wants then fancy foods and expensive home improvement projects shouldn't have been bought.

The book is outlined in months, with each chapter highlighting a different month. The majority of what the book is about is not about what Judith did and did not buy and that disappointed me. If one wanted to do a similar challenge there are no tips or hints on how to do so. There is just too much of the actual challenge aspects missing from this book. It instead became a book about consumer spending quoting too many statistics.

She did admit when she cheated on her own challenge and bought a couple items that she didn't need and I give her props for that but all in all I found it a waste of time reading it and the quoting of statistics gave me a headache at times.



I have a few more books on my to read list and I hope that they will prove to be more interesting and informative.