The Good Feeling Doesn’t Last

Who doesn’t need a solid gold A/C knob? C’mon! I heard this great quote the other day. It really spoke to me and describes how I’ve felt about new cars and many other purchases.

The quote is from Professor Barry Schwartz. He’s talking about the feelings we get when we purchase something we’ve desired for a long time. You know, the stuff we believe is the “absolute best”. In this case, it’s a Mercedes convertible:

The good feeling doesn’t last. We get used to having the Mercedes.
It’s spectacular. It’s better than sex the first week.
It’s better than a meal at a great restaurant the second week.
It’s pretty damn good the third week.
And after that it’s just your car.

To me, this spoke volumes. This quote has to do with a lot more than just cars!

Imagine, if you will, how much more you could save if you had just bought a car instead of a fancy car with all the trimmings, especially when the good feeling usually fades. Is spending thousands of dollars more to get that car you’ve been dreaming about worth it when, in the end, it’s really just going to become “a car”?

To some folks, it may very well be, and I see no problem with that. If it’s been your dream to own a Mercedes, and you honestly feel it’s a smart financial decision, then it’s important to try and realize your dreams. I know Melissa still loves the knives she has even though she could have gotten cheaper versions for the same job. Perhaps they aren’t as exciting now as they were at one point, but she still loves her knives, babies them, and they are critically important for her cooking.

I think the moral of the story here has more to do with keeping in mind that something that may seem exotic or unattainable, or something you’ve attached a lot of desire to, can become mundane after a short time. Personally, I’ve had this feeling with regards to things other than cars. My first DVD player I went all out and got a very expensive model that could take two DVDs at once and had a lot of features that I thought would make for a crisper picture. In the end, I’d probably have been just as happy with a plain jane model. I would have saved a lot of money, too. It didn’t really play movies any better than the cheaper DVD players.

You have to do what’s right for you, but I think the next time I consider an expensive purchase that I’ll think whether or not it’s worth the money to get the bells and whistles (or prestige) in the long term, not just the short term. That will come in handy as we continue to find more things we need for the new house.

Image Source: Mike Babcock

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One Week’s Food

I came across this photo essay on the time.com website a while back. It shows a picture of a family and the food they eat in a week, along with the price and a few of their favorite foods. You can find the link here. It’s well worth a look.

A few things surprised me when I looked at this. I actually read through it a few times.

Is this how much people typically spend on food? I’ll have to admit that for a very long time I never paid attention to the food bills. I just bought what I wanted at the grocery store, usually going without a list, and then paid at the end and never tracked what I spent. As Melissa and I chose to live fully aware of our spending, we started tracking our food bills very closely. On an average week, we live on about $75 worth of food. When the month is tight, we can pull that weekly total down to $50 (and have managed to get it down to less than $40 when we had to). Some families (granted, there is going to be some difference based on currency exchange) spent nearly $500!

The American family from North Carolina had virtually no fresh food. I see some meat up front, a few tomatoes, and some grapes. The rest of it was processed food and fast food. Their expenditure for a family of 4 was nearly $350! In the US, to eat cheaply is seems that you have to buy processed food (you know, the kind that’s always on sale and has really good coupons). In our case, our most expensive weeks are when we have the most fresh food. There are never coupons for the fresh food. One thing I did notice was that there was a lot of fast food and that isn’t cheap. Their food bill is $1400 a month!

Another thing I noticed was that in many of the photos the families had large amounts of soda. Soda is an expense that is completely unnecessary in my book and it holds zero nutritional value. I wish I could convince Melissa of this but she just won’t give up her soda.

Some of the poorest locations had the most fresh food. The people from Chad had nearly nothing. The people from Ecuador had almost exclusively fresh food. The most healthy way to eat, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, was enjoyed more by the poorest countries, and less by the wealthiest. Why is that?

The discrepancy in costs was also amazing. The people in Germany spent $500 a week on food, while the people in Chad spent $1.23! That’s an enormous difference. I know there are reasons for the differences, but it still shocked me. Honestly, if I were spending $500 a week on food, I don’t think we’d be able to afford it! That’s $2000 a month (roughly). That’s double the house payment!

I also found it fascinating to see what people in different countries eat. I had no idea that frozen pizza was so popular around the world. Or that people drank quite so much soda. Just seeing the volume differences was interesting too.

Overall I just found the photos amazing and really appreciate that Time did this photo essay. Once we move I think I might try to put together a photo of what our family eats in a week and the total amount of money spent. I think that would be pretty interesting.

Ahh, How I’ve Missed Consumerism…

A new religion, you say? One of the ways we’ve managed to keep to our budget so well was that we steered clear of temptation. The last couple of months we didn’t go out to eat often to avoid spending too much there, and we didn’t go shopping anywhere except the grocery store (and then, with a specific list). We also just about stopped watching TV entirely so we didn’t see commercials for products.

Well, now that we are getting ever closer to moving in, we’ve had to go shopping. I have to say, it was pretty damn shocking! Having avoided shopping successfully for about the last 6 months, we hit several electronic stores, appliance stores, and the mall today in one fell swoop.

I had forgotten how overstimulating the stores were. The loud music, large numbers of people, bright lights, obnoxious signage, and just all around too much!

To make it that much worse, it’s less than a week until the busiest shopping day of the year. Black Friday. I went shopping on Black Friday once. Once. It was an absolutely awful experience. It was nothing like today, but I can see the beginning of the buildup.

The Christmas decorations are everywhere. Don’t get me wrong - I like Christmas just fine. But it’s just so overdone at the stores. Lights, displays, animated talking Santas, you name it!

There was a Sony PS3 truck playing very loud rap music in front of Fry’s Electronics. It was crazy! This huge semi trailer had big screen TVs and PS3 boxes all over it. I used to be a big gamer, so it was pretty tempting for me, but the way too loud rap music kept me away. The only thing that could have made this more obnoxious would be a group of bikini clad women shooting t-shirts at people with air guns (this isn’t a too uncommon tactic at big gaming conventions).

Luckily, we went in with a mission and avoided most of the temptations at the stores. We didn’t buy a single thing. We stuck to our commitment just to price the things we knew we wanted, and to compare the models that we were considering. We’ve done most of our comparison online, and have checked things out with Consumer Reports, but you really have to go in and see these things in person. Or at least we do. We measured, poked, prodded, flipped switches, and compared colors in person on refrigerators and washer/dryer combinations.

After all the insanity of today, I think I just need to sit back, relax, and enjoy the silence. I’ll finish my comparisons tomorrow after I get my chance to decompress.

Image Source: roland

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! :-)

10 Classes To (Hopefully) Fix My Life

I got tagged by Kyle, my meme loving buddy, over at Rather Be Shopping with a new meme. The revenge tag is the best kind of tag, I’m told. :-)

Anyways, I’m glad he tagged me because I like this meme. I think there is enough in my life that needs fixing to warrant a challenging courseload.

Devise a list of 5-10 courses you would take to fix your life. It’s more fun to be in classes with friends, so include one class from the person who tagged you that you’d also like to take. Tag five.

I was often an over-achiever in school so I’ll go for the gusto and choose 10 classes that I’d like to take to fix my life:

I need to learn Photoshop 1. Winning Contests 101 - This is the class I’d take with Kyle. I, too, would love to learn how to win these contests. I never seem to have luck on my side in contests, yet others win multiple prizes or even lotteries. Crazy.

2. Advanced Photoshop (for dummies) - This would be a great class for me. I have a ton of good photos that have the potential to be great with just a little advanced Photoshop tweaking. I can already do some of the basics but I want to learn how to turn a shot into art. This could take the pics in my reducipes to a whole new level!

3. Self-Confidence 101 - Sometimes I have issues feeling confident about my work/abilities/progress/decisions/whatever. I think I would be a happier and more confident person if I could acknowledge my achievements and not nit-pick and second-guess them. Isn’t it funny how we tend to be so much harder on ourselves than the people we love?

4. Home Economics - The REALLY good kind of Home Ec not the “lame-high-school-lets-boil-water” kind that I missed out on. I think a class that could teach me how to properly clean/restore just about everything, economize all my household spending, prepare weekly meals that maximized my pantry while minimizing my costs, and how to prep and cook anything anywhere anytime would be great. I’m sure if this class existed it would be a 10-year course taught by a team of professional grandmas.

5. Produce Gardening for Beginners - I have no idea how to garden but I want to start one in the new house. I don’t want to kill everything I put in the ground next year so this course would be very useful. I think eating something that I grew all by myself would be surreal to me. Having just said that makes me a little sad. I need to garden, if anything just to get in touch with the reality of how we get fresh food.

6. The Secret to Absolute Productivity - I would take this class in a heartbeat. I need to feel and be more productive with my days. Sometimes I look at the clock and what I’ve completed and wonder where the day went. I have a million things on my to-do list that never seem to get done. I need a serious time management butt kicking boot camp.

7. Bread Baking 101 - I am not afraid of or a failure at baking bread I just need to learn from an expert on how to perfect my baking. My pita bread tastes great but it doesn’t rise and create a pocket. My white loaf tastes great but it isn’t light and airy like store-bought sandwich bread. I need some people who have mad baking skillz to teach me the tricks of the trade. That would make me (and my bread-loving husband) happy.

8. Personal Investing 201 - Having graduated from a top 20 business school, I’ve taken courses in finance and investing but I still don’t feel like I learned much about investing for MY future. Those courses were more focused on business rather than for the individual. The course I would want to take would cover strategies and risk management for the home investor.

9. Feline Medicine - If you saw our vet bills you would know why I’d take this course. ‘Nuff said.

10. The Art of Persuasion 101 - Imagine if you could convince anyone of anything. Talk about a course to fix your life! I would get the best deals on everything, never pay a fine, never lose an argument, and potentially rule the world with that skill set. Ehhh, I’d probably just convince someone else to rule the world and persuade them to listen to me. I promise I’d only use this superpower for good, not evil.

Ahhhh, if only the act of taking a class would mean I’d learn and implement the subject matter required to “fix” my life. I will tag just three people for this meme: Brip Blap, Punny Money, and Clever Dude. I bet these guys would have some interesting answers for this one.

Image Source: NoiseCollusion

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