Friday, January 12, 2007

Shopping bulimia


It's no secret that I love to shop. But I also track every expense so I know where the money goes. And I always these questions when I buy something:
  1. Is it in the budget, or more likely, will I go over budget?
  2. Do I need it or just want it?
  3. Do I love it or will my family love it?
  4. Is there something else I already have that I could use instead?
  5. Do I have a place for it? This is key, I hate clutter and having stuff pile up everywhere.
Sometimes if I lapse and buy too much stuff, I find myself feeling guilty and return things. I almost get as much satisfaction returning things as buying them in the first place. I love the feeling of purging excess and of putting cash back into my own pocket. I'm even one of those people who take the 100% guarantee at any time from Land's End and LL Bean to heart. I've returned stuff to them that is worn out or outgrown because they encourage us to do so! Perhaps I really am a shop-a-holic and suffer from shopping bulimia. Buy and return, buy and return. I guess there are worse afflictions to have!

Here are 2 interesting articles from FrugalForLife links on compulsive buying disorder and savings in men vs. women. Thankfully, I only suffer from occasional impulse buying. I also love to save and invest as well, so I got it all covered!

1 comment :

Bigqueue said...

Wow...I totally understand that there are differences between men and women....but I guess I tend to never jump out and make general blanket assumptions. (But then I suppose no one sees their own prejudice, right)

Anyways, I read the article about "Savings in men and women", and boy was I surprised how much I fit the typical male profile.

From the article: "Men, trained to fix and provide, view money as a means to capture and accumulate value. Men don't spend, they invest. Men don't want something, they need it. Theirs is a future-money orientation."/

But the one thing that Cheryl and I did do was talk about our values and how we would spend and save our money.

Sure, we had disagreements on things, but we were generally very flexible with each other and never surprised each other. (of course we might have been in a much different boat had we not had decent incomes)

Nice post...and I love the shopping cart graphic!