To move forward, sometimes you have to look back.

I like to work with data. Don’t tell me the warm fuzzies I’ll get knowing I’m affecting change in my community, tell me what that change is. And similarly, if I’m setting out on a mission to change my spending, I need to know where I’m starting from.

To do this, I took a look at my spending in the first three months of this year, January through March 2024. Unsurprisingly, my local spending varied a little each month. Generally speaking, between 5% and 9% of my spending in a given month went to local businesses… which to be honest, was better than I feared. This includes tickets to a local play, drinks at a local bar, produce at a local farmer’s market, and more.

But where to go from here?

I’m actually expecting my local spending to dip at first. The majority of it is at bars and restaurants, which is an area of my spending I’m (unrelatedly) wanting to tighten up a bit. So I’ll need to find other areas to compensate.

Of the remaining 90+%, I split this into a few different categories in order to focus and prioritize.

The first is things that will be hard to change. Perhaps not always impossible, but unlikely to be an area I’ll have a lot of impact early on. This includes things like:

• Convincing PG&E to finally free me from their services and go off the grid
• My dog’s food (I’ll confess: she gets big store brand and loves it)
• My retirement account, which inherently supports the biggest business in America

Then, there are things that would be easy to change. These are areas where I already have a tendency to buy local, and I can easily think of places off the top of my head to turn to for things like:

• Where I get most of my food
• Gifts for loved ones

Finally, there are categories that present interesting challenges. This in-between category feels like an exciting area to learn more about, but surely won’t be a cake walk. I’m expecting a fair number of my future posts to be about some of the things I learn, like:

• Where I source my entertainment (dare I give up Netflix?)
• Where to get a highly-specific thing without just searching the internet
• Local clothes sources without breaking the bank

And to be honest, I expect the hardest changes to be the ones that haven’t even occurred to me.

Additionally, this isn’t with an unlimited budget. I’m still under the constraints I’m under, which means I already know I won’t be able to just buy all my fish at the boutique fishmonger and pay a local artisan to hand-knit all of my clothes. So this will also be a journey of finding balance. I can justify a few dollars more per grocery trip if it means more of that money stays in my community, but I can’t justify doubling my expenses.

I can’t say for sure where I’m going to choose to prioritize, but I’m interested to hear how you think about budgeting around choosing local.

Let’s find out together.