Emotional Purchases: Our Anniversary Indulgence

Tradition can be yummy To say that we didn’t spend any money on our anniversary isn’t entirely true. We did decide at the last minute to spend some money on a treat for the both of us.

Traditionally, the bride and groom eat the top tier of their wedding cake on their first anniversary. We saved ours for this purpose. About two weeks after the wedding I realized it was taking up too much freezer space and said that we would eat it on our first month “anniversary” instead. We would just get a fresh one made if we decided to honor the tradition when we reached a year.

The morning before our anniversary Eric and I discussed getting a replacement topper to celebrate the occasion. In order to stay true to tradition, I contacted the bakery that made our wedding cake and asked what it would cost to make a small round topper like our original cake (without the decorations). It was white cake filled with fresh strawberries and cream cheese all iced in buttercream. Yum!

I knew it wasn’t going to be a cheap cake but the price still caught me off guard. I asked if they sold the cake by the slice but they didn’t – I would have to get a cake made and the smallest one fed six. After exhausting the options on the phone with her I impulsively said that would be fine, and placed an order for the bare minimum to be ready the following day.

When I hung up the phone a little wave of panic set in and I questioned my decision. I ended up calling a few friends to ask if I made a mistake and if I should cancel it. My mother said that I should cancel the order and suggested making one from scratch to save money. Although I normally would have made the cake myself we weren’t having the cake just to have cake. Either we followed tradition with that particular cake or we didn’t need to do it. It certainly wasn’t a requirement for us.

When I chatted with Eric about my concerns I was surprised to hear that he still wanted to get the cake. He said that we weren’t just buying any old cake; we were keeping with tradition for our first anniversary and that should be considered in the decision. He also said that we could make it work in our budget by counting it into food costs. I agreed that it was a lovely thing to do and with my husband’s encouragement I decided not to cancel the order.

This was definitely an emotionally driven purchase rather than a rational one. After placing the order my rational side immediately alerted me that I needed to step back and ask for other’s opinions. Honoring tradition (especially when it is wedding related) can elicit a strong emotional response and I realized I might not be able to trust my own judgment in this situation.

I wonder if this emotional response is what leads “normal” people to buy really expensive wedding gowns, designer baby furniture, huge diamond engagement rings, even costly funeral caskets. I can’t imagine these are completely rational purchases. There must be an emotional component influencing the decision.

To help cover the cost of this emotional purchase my rational side will take the cost of the cake from the grocery budget. That should be fine since we are already planning to limit our grocery purchases this month to mainly the fresh essentials. In preparation for the move we are cleaning out the pantry and freezer so my grocery trips will cost significantly less.

*drool* And boy, is it a good cake! Thoroughly and utterly delicious! The cake is more like eight or ten servings, not six, so we are still enjoying it this week.

Of course, this will not become a yearly thing. It was a $40 splurge only suited for the first anniversary. When you think about what this anniversary COULD have cost us (in gifts we didn’t buy for each other) I think we got by on a dime.

Ok, so it was about 400 dimes, but that’s still not bad! :-)

When Frugality Becomes A Dirty Stinkin’ Excuse

But they’re soaking… This morning when I got up to make breakfast I noticed something didn’t smell right in the kitchen. The garbage was full and it was starting to smell a little. I kept putting off taking it out because I could fit more in the garbage bag. I might as well maximize using that bag before tossing it, right?

Realizing my garbage was in desperate need of attention I also noticed the dishes in the sink were building up. And in the laundry room there was a pile of dirty laundry. What happened here? Why did I get so behind in my household chores?

Frugality. Yes, you heard me. Ok, well maybe not frugality but the guise of frugality. I think I’ve been using frugality as an excuse to put off doing some chores that needed to be done.

“I can fit a little more trash in this garbage bag – I’ll wait to take it out until tomorrow”.

“But if I wait to do the dishes/laundry until tomorrow I’ll have a bigger load and it will save water and electricity.”

Who am I kidding? I’m not really saving any real amount of money – I’m just being plain lazy. It wasn’t like I only had a few shirts to wash or a couple of glasses in the sink. I had big enough loads to make it energy efficient and worth the cost. I was simply finding a way to justify my lack of housekeeping yesterday with saving money.

What good is saving a few pennies if I have to live in home with stinky garbage and dirty clothes? Quality of life plays into this, too. I don’t have to be a slob to save money.

I know I’m being dramatic here – I wasn’t horribly behind in my chores – but the smelly trash did make me examine my thinking behind not removing it earlier. I remember thinking that in a way I could be saving money.

This applies to more than just household duties. Could a desire to save money be used as an excuse to hide the true reason behind certain actions (or inactions)?

Could there be other reasons besides frugality that someone would:

Avoid social situations like dinners or group activities?
Delay traveling or shopping in favor of staying home?
Neglect their health by avoiding doctors, health checks, dental exams, etc?
Avoid replacing things they need when they are clearly worn out?

I can think of a lot of ways frugality could be used to justify behavior that is really motivated by different reasons. After all, you can still attend dinners with your friends if you eat an inexpensive meal or split something. If there are ways to make it affordable and you still choose not to go then maybe the desire to save money isn’t the main reason you aren’t going. It’s just a side effect.

Anyway, this morning I went on a crash course of cleaning to restore my home to its usual condition. I need to be more honest with myself about my motivations sometimes. For instance, if I avoid going grocery shopping is it really because I want to save money or is it because I don’t feel like going that day?

In my case, it was pretty obvious I was just avoiding doing the dishes and saving money was just a convenient (and barely applicable) excuse.

Image Source: Old Sarge

The Psychology of Free

Free Stuff! Oh man, I gotta get some of that free stuff!!! Recently, Golbguru at Money, Matter, and More Musings talked about hoarding free “stuff”. He discussed how it wasn’t really frugal to hoard free things like ketchup and low-end toiletries from a hotel.

I have to admit, I’ve been guilty of hoarding free stuff. Specifically hotel shampoos and soaps. Not out of frugality. Not out of need. It was really because, as the person in Golbguru’s story said, I felt I had paid for them, so I better take them. It makes no sense. But I did it anyhow.

We went to dinner with some friends over the weekend. A nice cheap dinner with some frugal friends of ours where we could just socialize, talk, and share stories. I brought up the stories about the ketchup and free toiletries. I admitted my hoarding (which is really in the past – I can’t get any more until we use some, which we will). Then my friend brought up a point I hadn’t considered:

You know, if they charged you a penny for those toiletries, I bet you wouldn’t take them.

Immediately, I knew he was right. A penny. A single stinking penny. I’m sure I have hundreds of pennies around the house. It wouldn’t be a burden in the least. In fact, that stuff is probably worth more than a penny. But I wouldn’t have spent a penny on them.

(Note : If you’ve had this habit of hoarding these things, consider donating them to a local women’s or homeless shelter. They can usually make use of them even if you can’t.)

Why would something so insignificant as a penny stop me from taking what I would have gladly taken for free?

Could it be that something becomes more desirable solely because it’s free, and not because it has any real intrinsic value? Removing free from the equation, you can make a real judgment on the value. Very simple concept, but not something I had given much thought to before.

What’s the “real” value of something I’m getting for free? Do we value it less because it’s free, yet still want it based on the fact that we don’t have to pay for it? Do things that are free lose the value they might have had if we had actually paid for them? Is this free item valuable enough to me that I would be willing to pay for it? This conversation kind of made it click for me.

I wondered if the same could go for fast food restaurants. I haven’t hoarded ketchup (it’s OK, but not my favorite condiment), but I always take too much hot sauce from Taco Bell. I have a drawer full. If I go back, I’ll just get more, regardless of how much I have at home.

When the sauces are free, I tend to take too many. More than I would ever use. But what if they weren’t free? By charging any amount of money, I’m forced to make a decision. Is the sauce worth purchasing? I might be willing to pay a small amount for just the sauce I will use. But if they gave a small amount for free (say 5 packets) and charged me a fee for another 5 packets, I would really have to think about it. Even if it was just a tiny bit of money to get more, I would be more likely to limit what I took just because I was forced to make a decision about how many I would actually use.

Our friend shared with us another story that I felt was relevant. She was volunteering and had to help folks who were down on their luck and needed help. If the people lived far enough away, her charity would provide them a bus ticket so they could have transportation. This would cost the charity $30 and would be given free to the client. These tickets were frequently lost. The charity instituted a new rule – all tickets would cost $1 to help offset the costs of replacement. Suddenly, people lost fewer tickets. Just the act of paying $1 changed how they viewed the ticket. They had invested in it now. The clients seemed to be more careful with them. Even though it was worth something before they spent $1 on it, it was somehow worth even more now.

This reminded me of the time I had 15 lollipops melt in my favorite travel bag. Traveling home from seeing my brother, Melissa and I stopped and had lunch at the airport. They had unlimited free lollipops. Jackpot! We stocked up! We’d eat these on the plane! Oh man, sour apple! Gotta have it! I think we both ate one, while the other 13 or so melted in the luggage which we had left in the hot garage. We never even thought about those lollipops. Those free lollipops cost us more in time and cleaning supplies than they were worth! I think if we had payed for them, we wouldn’t have taken as many, and we probably would have eaten what we had taken.

So what determines when something is worthwhile, and when it’s not?

I’ve got a new rule when it comes to free. Would I pay a penny for it? Would I pay a nickel for it? What’s my threshold for “free”? If I can’t answer honestly that I would consider paying a penny for it (or some other reasonable amount), then maybe it’s not worth it for me to take it. I will not take any more free “stuff”, just for the sake of taking it because it is free.

Image by frankh

Here We Are: A Penny Closer

My husband and I have never been the frugal type.

I never saved any of my earnings. I spent it on all sorts of gotta-have-it items that mean nothing to me now and really meant very little to me even then. I didn’t really think of savings unless it had to do with buying something expensive. The only future forward thinking I seemed to have involved figuring out how I was going to pay my cards that month.

After graduating from college I started my first salaried position. I wasn’t earning a fortune but it was more than I had ever earned before and I felt like I should be able to buy nicer things. My need to consume indiscriminately only seemed to gain steam as I entered adulthood.

I know my story is not unique. I’m sure many young adults don’t think about the future when it comes to spending money – that appears to come with the territory when we lack maturity and the feeling of mortality. The watchword at the time was instant gratification.

I had no idea how to really handle my money. The bills would mount up and I would face the fact that I couldn’t spend as much. I would cut back to pay the cards down but I still didn’t actually change. I just temporarily bought less stuff. And although the act of buying less stuff was an accomplishment, my fundamental attitude about money hadn’t changed. And thus the cycle continued: spending too much, having the credit card bill sky rocket, cutting back to pay it down, rinse, repeat.

My husband also wasn’t a saver although he had more restraint than I had throughout college and beyond. Even though he wasn’t budgeting or tracking how he spent his money he was still generally moving in a positive direction. He was doing some of the right things, like contributing to 401K, but he wasn’t monitoring his financial health or researching the best deals. He was just coasting along, enjoying the scenery.

When we fell in love our bad habits rubbed off on one another. Collectively, we had no idea how to budget and really didn’t have any desire to attempt to. We were quite content living outside our means and had no idea how much we were really spending. It wasn’t until we faced our first challenge as a married couple that we actually started to think about how we were living and our financial situation.

I suspect that I’m not alone. Maybe it takes a challenge, whether that is hitting a credit card limit, a new or changing relationship, or a specific desire that seems out of reach, to wake us up from this sort of auto-pilot spending pattern.

When we sat down and finally examined our bills we realized that there was no way we could reach our goal of moving into a new home the way we were spending. Technically, we couldn’t even afford to live in our current home, never mind a newer one! It was crushing. Things had to change. We had to change.

It certainly has been a journey so far. We have found that through making informed decisions and simply being aware of how we spend our money we have been able to make great strides in improving our quality of life and ability to save.

No, we aren’t completely debt free and no, we aren’t in that new home yet.
But after the changes we have made, we will be.

We still worry about money, but it is a different kind of worry now. We are empowered by being frugal and managing our finances instead of feeling, for lack of a better word, oblivious. The confidence we have gained in knowing we have a level of control over our money, rather than the other way around, is really invaluable.

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