I knew I wasn’t at the black-belt ninja level of saving money and avoiding consumerist tendencies, but I didn’t expect myself to so easefully slip into spending a lot of dough pretty unconsciously, when the context and circumstances made it easy.
Last week, I went to buy hay for my goats at a feed store in Dublin. There are feed stores closer to my home, but the Dublin store has consistently high quality alfalfa hay, so I make the 20-minute drive there every six weeks or so to buy the better quality stuff.
But when I got to the store last Wednesday, the guy at the counter told me they were out of alfalfa hay, which is like a McDonald’s employee saying they’re out of Big Macs—basically unimaginable. He told me they’d be getting a delivery later that afternoon, so I figured I’d return the next day.
I felt irked at having made the trip to Dublin without completing my mission. I remembered I needed to get another pair of stretchy black capris for work, so I decided to go to REI (also in Dublin) to pick them up. I wear stretchy black capris every day for work at the mental health rehabilitation center because they’re comfortable and allow me to move freely, but (I like to believe) they don’t make me look like I totally don’t care what I look like—which other options, such as sweatpants, which are comfortable and allow me to move freely, might.
I got to REI and went to the section of the store where they usually have those capris. Things had been moved around a bit, and where I would have normally found what I was looking for, there was now a clearance rack. Hmmm. A clearance rack. Why not have a look?
In my size, I immediately found a sleeveless dress for half off—however, half off here was still a $45 dress. I had wanted to find another sleeveless summer dress at Thrift Town or Eco Thrift, but here I was in REI, and I really liked the fabric and print of this dress, and what harm would it do to try it on? I also found a sleeveless top on sale, and I could really use another sleeveless top for work, although the sleeveless top season is winding down, but I was already going to the fitting room, wasn’t I? So I took that too.
I ended up with half a dozen items, some in multiple sizes, from the clearance rack, and then I saw a pair of pants I really liked that were not on sale. Why not just try them on?
As always happens (and thank goodness for this from a financial perspective), most of the stuff looked terrible on me or just didn’t fit well enough.
But the dress, and the top, and the pants that weren’t on sale—I liked the way they looked.
I added up the total, with the capris, in the dressing room, and it was over $200. That is more than I have spent on clothes all year, and I noted that fact.
And then I don’t really know what happened next, but like a gambling addict that wakes up in a suite in Caesar’s Palace having blackjacked away her life savings without remembering quite how it unfolded, I had paid $226.46 for four items and I was on my way out to the car with my goods. I felt a little hangdog about the whole escapade, but once I got them home, I didn’t want to return them. I don’t mean I didn’t want to make the trip back to the store; I mean I wanted to keep what I had bought, even though all of it—except the capris—were spontaneously-generated wants, not needs or long-standing desires.
It was a perfect storm of feeling irked about the hay--but of course, it was ridiculous to “make the trip worth it” by spending a wad of cash on a lot more than a single pair of capris—and shopping, alone, in a store that I know I have the potential to overspend in. Because it’s a pricey store to begin with, and I tend to like a lot of their stuff.
Meanwhile, I keep a Buy Waitlist on my computer, where I list something I think I want to buy, the price, and the date. If I look at it a month later and I don’t really care to get the item any more, I delete it. There’s nothing I have put on that list this year that I have subsequently purchased. It’s all superfluous stuff, and building in that pause button has really made a difference. That pause button is easy to incorporate when it comes to online purchases.
So I think I probably need to stay out of most retail stores, or go in with a friend or relation who can remind me to press my pause button.
It’s a similar thing with certain catalogs. I get Garnet Hill and Sundance catalogs. Sometimes, I recycle them as soon as they arrive, but other times (What’s different that makes me sometimes hold on to them? I don’t know), I hang on to them and look through them. I very much like a lot of Garnet Hill’s bed linens, and last week, I received the catalog one day; held on to it and browsed it and noted some linens I really liked; and then got a postcard the day after for 30% off a full-price Garnet Hill item.
Slick, Garnet Hill, but I’m not falling for it. I recycled both the catalog and the 30% off postcard the day the card arrived.
I know we’re heading into all the holiday offers and marketing ploys and come-ons. I’m susceptible to this stuff, so I need to stay vigilant, and really interrogate potential purchases before taking the plunge. I’m rereading some choice anti-consumerist posts from some of my favorite personal finance bloggers to fortify myself.
Here’s Mr. Money Mustache on becoming a millionaire $10 at a time:
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/08/01/a-millionaire-is-made-ten-bucks-at-a-time/
Mr. MM on hedonic adaptation:
Early Retirement Extreme’s explanation of how to become financially independent one budget item at a time, examined through the lens of a coffee habit:
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-true-cost-of-coffee-addiction.html
And from The Onion, getting permission from the Treasury Department for purchases over $50:
https://www.theonion.com/consumers-now-required-to-seek-treasury-department-appr-1819572852