Your past influences your spending
Posted
Feb 29 2008, 12:17 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This guest post comes from Lynnae at Being Frugal.
When I was a kid, my family didn't have a lot of money. In most areas, I never felt deprived. I have three younger brothers, so I was always busy playing outside with them. Or picking on them, but we won't talk about that.
One thing I did notice was that, with four kids and not a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of clothes. My brothers and I each had three school outfits. We wore two of the outfits on Monday and Tuesday, the third on Wednesday, when my mom did the laundry, and the first two outfits on Thursday and Friday. Every week.
I even remember my mom commenting that one of my friend's moms had mentioned that her child had enough clothes to last a week without doing laundry. My mom didn't know how they could afford it.
I remember being jealous.
Now that I'm an adult, surprisingly, I'm not tempted to overbuy clothes for myself. I hate shopping for myself, and my relatively small wardrobe shows it. However, I do have a tendency to overbuy for the kids. I think that somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, I'm afraid that they won’t have enough clothes.
Mind you, I don't pay a lot for their clothes. I buy everything on clearance and usually with a coupon. However, you're not saving money when you're buying too much.
Make a list
Fortunately, I've found that there's hope. I'm not destined to keep buying too many clothes for my children. In situations where my heart is threatening to overthrow my finances, I've found that setting down some ground rules for myself helps a lot.
In the case of my children's wardrobes, I made a list of every single item of clothing they owned. I determined how many days I wanted to be able to go between doing laundry for them. I picked nine days. I actually do their laundry once a week, but I like a couple of extra days in case I'm sick or busy and don't get to the laundry.
At least six outfits had to be school-worthy. Older outfits on the weekends were OK. And a couple of church-worthy outfits were important for Sundays.
After deciding what my children actually needed, I matched up the list of what they had with the list of what they needed. Voila! I knew exactly what I needed to buy. For a long time I kept that list in my purse, in case I came across a great clearance sale. It's a system that has worked well for me.
When you're tempted to overspend, setting up a system to circumvent the temptation is important. Your system might include lists, a budget, waiting 48 hours between seeing an item and making a purchase, or any number of things.
The important thing is to know your weaknesses and be prepared for them. It makes sticking to a budget much easier. It's less wasteful, too.
How about you? Do you have any weaknesses when it comes to spending? Do you see a link between your past and your present?
Other articles of interest at Being Frugal:
"The evolution of my budget"
"When I woke up and smelled the coffee"
"You tell me: Where do you find the deals?"
