My February No-Buy Spending Report: The True Impact Of Outfit Repeating

March 2, 2026

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By Holly Trantham, TFD Creative Director

For all of 2026, I’m sticking to a no-buy challenge I created myself: The Nothing-New-Year. There are exceptions, of course; I can buy replacements for things I genuinely need (including for makeup and skincare), I can attempt to find items secondhand if I need something for a special occasion, and I can buy books if I already read and loved them from the library. But the point is to bring nothing net-new into my closet and make better use of what I have, especially after refamiliarizing myself with my closet now that I’m postpartum. My rules are a bit more extensive than that, and you can read them in full here. And, as always, I’m tracking all of my spending on Monarch, which honestly takes me mere minutes each month.

We’ve now wrapped up the second month of the year, and I’m thrilled to say I have successfully completed another month of buying nothing new, and my overall spending was way down. January was a month full of spending on experiences to come (and you can check out my full breakdown here), which meant February was a month of cashing in. Here’s the snapshot from my Monarch app:

My biggest category this month was restaurant spending, which is much more in line with my usual than January was. Over $800 does sound like a lot, but considering that included several meals out with friends and one very nice dinner we treated my parents to, that amount feels more than reasonable to me! I also spent a fair amount on upcoming travel, including a deposit on a hotel for (my first!) Mother’s Day weekend and plane tickets to North Carolina for our nephew’s first birthday celebration. Travel expenses come out of our sinking fund rather than our “regular” monthly budget, meaning I still spent way less overall than during the prior month.

Otherwise, I spent a fair amount on gifts (including a birthday gift and cake order for my mom), but everything else was pretty low. My only fitness charge this month was my yoga studio membership, versus last month when that category was somehow over $500 (lol).

I want to call out a few particular items/circumstances that made it possible for me to keep my spending significantly lower this month:

• I’ve been attending classes (pilates, skating) that I already paid for last month, so those will be another expense in the future if I want to keep doing them, but I didn’t need to pay for them this month.

• My husband did almost all of the grocery shopping this month, so I have very little of that accounted for on my card. But even spending what we usually do on groceries (around $900 total), that still keeps our combined spending well under last month, thanks to fewer big expenses like tickets to shows and fitness class packages.

• We ended up being stuck at my parents’ house for four extra days due to the blizzard in NYC, which gave us four extra days of not paying for groceries for the month.

• I went to a black tie optional wedding and decided to rewear a dress I’ve had for 5 years! When I started this challenge, I said I would allow myself to find secondhand pieces for special occasions if I wanted — but I just never felt like it, so outfit-repeating it was. This is something I would have easily spent $300+ on in the past, because I do love an excuse to wear a fancy dress and like to prioritize quality. BUT, buying for quality makes it easier to rewear things multiple times :) Pic below!

• We didn’t spend any money on our daughter, Sadie (aside from the normal things like diapers/formula, all on Peter’s card), even though we had room for it — she just didn’t need anything, and I’m getting better at ignoring the targeted ads I get from Baby Boden, despite how freakin’ cute everything is!

• Now that we are in our daycare dropoff routine and I have quieter workdays at home, I’m spending a lot less time going out to grab coffee. Of course, daycare costs money, but we save for that ahead of time, so it doesn’t come out of our discretionary monthly spending. 

• I treated myself to a spa day, most of which was already covered by a gift card! I’m starting to love delayed-gratification gifts much more than physical objects, especially since it got me a much-needed massage at 5 months postpartum.

The successful outfit-repeat in question!

Overall, when looking at both mine and Peter’s spending in Monarch, we spent $1,500 less than in January! 

While this month really didn’t present me with too many buying temptations, I know better than to think that will just continue for the rest of the year. For instance, I am definitely starting to notice the outfits I default to frequently, and I can tell that is going to make me itch to buy something new soon. This month, probably around when I transition my closet over for spring, I’m going to take a little better inventory of what I have and bring some lesser-worn pieces to the forefront so my day-to-day dressing feels fresh. 

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