“The Year of Less” is a book about how the author uncovered her true self beneath her external “stuff.” Cait Flanders spent a year dedicated to removing the clutter and unnecessary spending from her life. She got rid of everything she didn’t need, made herself a set of rules for what she could and could not spend money on, and stuck to her spending diet for a full year, tracking her progress in her blog at every step along the way. On the surface, this is all well and good. A cute little book about how to spend less and save money. But as Flanders found out, the journey was a whole lot more than that and uncovered more about herself than she was expecting.

As a compulsive _______ (fill in the blank – at some point in her life, Flanders was probably doing it. Ex: eater, drinker, spender, Netflix-watcher, etc), Flanders had a lot of vices that she could turn to when life on the outside was too hard. Through her journey of carefully monitoring her spending habits, she found that money and stuff were also one of those “addictions” that she used as a crutch to mask the hard things she was going through in her life. I think most people, whether they realize it or not, use some material thing to help them cope. “The Year of Less” invites us to examine what in our life is bringing us closer toward our best self. By taking a step back to learn what we spend too much on that we don’t truly need (take out coffee), we can instead find it in our budgets to spend money on things we love, but thought we couldn’t afford (travel). Overall, a good read. Be careful though, it may make you want to donate 50% of everything you own by the end!

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Created Apr 26, 2020 at 2:03pm • Submit your own review...