I’m smart with money.
I mean, I’m not smart to keep it. I’m smart enough to do it: almost every year I earn more than the year before.
But when it comes to budgeting expenses, saving part of the month’s source of income, locating investments that “make your money a painting for you” and other adult monetary things, I get a big F.
As on wheels, each and every one of the months of April, my accountant presents me with mortifying figures. “Where did each and every one go? I’m saying.” I guess we’re going to have to start tightening our belts. Maybe we’re going to go out and eat more at home. »
“You say that every single year,” he laughs.
Oh, though, he didn’t know me in 2007.
It’s the year of my only successful monetary experience. It was also the year my husband and I got married. We controlled to pay for our own wedding with the cash I had stored after a total year without buying.
Now that COVID-19 is creating a country of savers and customer spending has gone down, I looked for a percentage of my account in case you also want inspiration to deposit the credit card. Or, if you’re already in a race with no expense, it might inspire you to move on.
My pleasure began with a Mastercard that induced reflux. I knew I was making a lot of shopping, but this bill had an additional 0 than I imagined in my head. My annual clothing budget? I spent it in a month.
Something had to change. I saw an editorial about a woman who had stopped buying groceries for a year. I hadn’t read it, who has time? – however, the concept has sown a seed.
Putting the offending credit card bill in my trash drawer, I made the brave statement: “Don’t buy clothes for a year.” This included shoes, bags, accessories, anything I could wear. I don’t mean to save a specific amount. Honestly, I’m a little afraid to know how much I spend. I was just looking to give myself the gift of a low payline and see what I was doing.
I want to explain something: even before I painted from home in my own writing company, my paintings never forced me to “look at the work” or “dress for the task you want”. I haven’t painted in Condé Nast or any other position where it’s rumored that young inmates are getting into an elevator with Diane Von Furstenberg’s impression from last year and never get out alive.
I’m also a celebrity who’s going to be humiliated through InStyle for dressing up in the same seductive monkey at a Hollywood premiere I used in my sushi with my mysterious boytoy.
And yet, after discovering in eighth grade that possessing several Benetton vests can inspire the respect of even the most ruthless classmates, he had a shopping addiction. Stopping it, I suspected, it wouldn’t be easy.
I spent my year of abstinence talking about my plans with my husband now, Steven. We lived together, so it would be the first line of responsibility. It’s not that I can’t get him to make a purchase. In the store, they tell me “no bag, thank you” so I can smuggle a new dress or top, wrapped in fabric and wrapped in my handbag.
I told my friends. “Wow, ” said one of them. “Then what do you wear for Sarah’s wedding?”
Damn it, I thought.
On some level, I knew no one would notice or care if I dressed up for the wedding rehearsal of one of the school’s best friends. But soon I thought I’d put my clothes on hold long enough to buy something new.
Instead, I remembered that I had to worry about my “look” for someone else’s wedding: “This occasion is about the couple, not about you.”
I also learned that if I didn’t realize other people’s repeated outfits, why would they notice mine?
That’s how I stopped spending.
Every time I was tempted to pass through an object in the window and the idea that it came in ‘just to look’, I thought, ‘If you don’t come in, I definitely didn’t buy anything. If he comes in, he can do it.
The magazines are designed to sell you the fantasy that if you buy those wide checkered pants that look wonderful in the 15-year-old 1.80s woman my 110 pounds, you’ll get it. To this I say: Sold! I knew that flipping through bright pages can send me to a shopping spiral, so I left them alone.
When your closet is so complete that pieces that aren’t on hangers are suspended by compression between hanging clothes, you know you have too many things. You never know what to locate either.
I didn’t have to worry about dressing twice; it turns out I had enough to wear anything else every day of the year.
This procedure also embarrassed me that I never have to buy again. So many things I’d bought and never used. The waste made me need to throw up.
I made a decision that the bras and underwear didn’t count. Neither the tracksuit pants nor anything I thought like relaxing clothes, most of which were bought at Gap Body (and I still do). Fortunately, I didn’t sweat as fetishist as we were encouraged to do this pandemic. Cashmere can do a lot of damage.
Despite the basics, when Steven and I had to deposit a down payment for our wedding broker, about a year after my experiment began, I was surprised to find that there was enough in my existing account for the total party.
After not buying clothes for a year, I saved about $35,000. It’s enough for a small wedding, only 70 people, with a DJ instead of a band. But he’s in a pretty fancy position in New York.
There’s lobster.
Buying a dress for my engagement party broke the seal. Then there was a new pair of earrings. And, of course, shoes. I needed outfits for the honeymoon, I ended up dressed in an edition of the same thing every day. (Very European.)
Would you do it again? Absolutely. In fact, I probably should. Even when I was forty in New York, when everyone had to dress respectably above the waist (which I renamed Zoom Meridian), I discovered a lot to order. Bandanas to wear as mask, “fashionable” mask that never has compatibility but is too confusing to return, a compatibility ring in case I’m locked in the apartment, “good” shoes to wear for socializing, sweatshirt shorts (yes, shorts) because I can no longer in anything that is not stretchable. The list goes on.
I can’t tighten my belt in the abstract, however, I’ve discovered that an all-or-nothing rule works well for me. Maybe you’re not saving up for a wedding. Maybe you’re not a compulsive buyer. (Good for you!) Whatever your monetary goal, whether it’s repaying a debt or saving for a home, it might be helpful to review this rule.
Today, when I discuss the opportunity to buy a garment, I create my wardrobe (which desperately wants some other purge) and ask myself, “Would I rather have something else to put on or more space in my closet?” Space gains most of the time.
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