So this is not something that’s very often discussed in minimalism communities, but I’ve recently gone through the process of minimizing the merchants that I interact with. A lot of mental clutter is bureaucratic, and anyone who tracks their spending rigorously knows how often things get messed up. Cards getting charged mistakenly, companies trying to pull sketchy shit, deliveries not showing up, etc. A side effect of minimizing initially was that I just spent less time working out issues with underpaid and therefore lazy customer service reps, and I found that to be a huge unexpected relief, but not a fully effective one, so two months ago I just went through all of my cards and made a list of every single company I give money to every month and stripped out what I could. I was OK with spending a bit of extra money to pare down that list, but actually ended up saving money on net - sometimes you spend more money than you save trying to take advantage of deals and such, and the more companies you interact with the more you’re going to get screwed over.

I tried to get rid of the following:

  1. Any companies I don’t jive with ethically. Loblaw (in Canada) is horrid, and I was really only still buying from them because of the brief inconvenience of having to find an alternative (they’re virtually monopolizing the grocery and toiletry sector at this point). I also took a couple of hours and contacted EVERY company I give significant money to to make sure they don’t support Russia. Fuck you Proctor & Gamble. It’s a huge moral weight off of my shoulders to know that, at bare minimum, I’m not making that situation worse. I only realized afterwards that I was SO SICK of walking into stores that just made my skin crawl, and how much it was weighing on me to support disgusting practices because convenience. This was, unexpectedly, by far the biggest plus.

  2. Any companies that had given me issues in the past. If you charge me a bullshit fee or don’t make every effort to fix your mistakes, it’s not worth my time. Banks were the biggest culprit here, followed by anything that Uber has ever touched. Also fuck you, Uber.

  3. Anything redundant. For example, there were some places I was just going to because they had the best price on one or two products. Not really worth my time. It’s great that your toothpaste or whatever is 50 cents cheaper than the next cheapest one, but the mental energy it takes to go out of my way to go to that store just isn’t worth it at this point. I also don’t need to get certain categories of stuff at five different places - it cuts down on decision fatigue to just have one place where you get all of your [fill in the blank].

  4. Anything that I didn’t feel good spending money on and was a headache. For example, while I love ordering delivery every once in a while, uber/doordash’s customer support is just so, so insultingly bad and things go wrong too often, and in the end it’s just too expensive. For that price I can invest in “my future” or “an experience”, which is just worth more than that temporary comfort.

  5. Any random subscriptions or anything coming off of my card that I didn’t really need. I had an annual subscription for a website that lets you make animated christmas cards. And the subscription renews in… April. WTF??? So yeah, that needed to go. Also cancelled spotify, had already cancelled netflix before I started.

I tried to find and add:

  1. Ethically “better” merchants. I found restaurants that offer in-house delivery so that I don’t need to use food delivery apps. They. Are. So. Much. Cheaper. You can’t beat $20 chinese food that lasts for two days. Credit unions are something that have been on my mind for a while. I also tried to find non-chain stores. I’m ok with the fact that I won’t be ethically perfect as a consumer, but in that area too many people let perfect be the enemy of good.

  2. Things that I wanted to spend more money on, usually to align with desired behaviors. A thrift store with good prices, healthy fast food, and place to get books. I tend to respond really well to habitual behaviors, so I find that if I just plunk it into my schedule it grows on me.

End results:

  • Savings of $220 in first full billing cycle.

  • Cut out over half of merchants, weirdly. A lot of these were stores for everyday stuff - groceries, food delivery, drugstores, netflix and other digital subscription services, etc.

  • Deleted so many apps. BYE UBER AND FUCK YOU FOREVER.

  • Just feel a lot more free and better, because a lot of places are out of my mind, completely, especially things that had been nagging at me forever.

  • MUCH better customer service. Goddamn, these “small businesses” that everyone talks about. They actually treat you like a human. Now I understand the hype.