Sushi Money

Spring sure feels good after a long winter, and now getting ready for summer. I find myself heading outside more often to enjoy the fresh air, clean up the landscaping and garage and ponder the various barbecue dinners for those warm summer evenings. I don’t know why, but then I start tinkering around with and trying to improve a lot of things both inside and outside the home.  That’s not so bad in itself, but then I start making a list of things we need from the store that will help fix or improve those things. 

Too many of us go shopping for a host of reasons other than finding something we really need.  We crave adventure and excitement, and it’s fun to buy things.  But after looking around the house and closets, we’re just buying junk that doesn’t help our family’s economic well-being.  If we’re not careful, we end up caught in viscious cycle that I call The Spending Loop.   

So there I am, wandering the aisles of the nearby big-box store filling up the cart with all kinds of stuff.  It’s a self-fulfilling spending loop that I’ve created from both a real and a perceived need to buy “things we need.”  Nothing wrong with that if spending is balanced against needs versus wants.  But too many of us don’t consider the difference.  When I head to the store to buy something, I’m half excited to be getting things that I think will help spruce up the house and keep it looking good.  

Yet sometimes, for all the good intentions we may have, a lot of that newly purchased stuff just ends up sitting on a shelf, and we don’t get around to finishing the projects we were really motivated about a few weeks earlier.   And if we’re not careful, that shopping and “sprucing up the house” can take on a life of its own, until it becomes a habit that takes real money out of the bank account over time, and we’re caught in that spending loop, piling on enormous debt over time. Honestly when I look in the garage and all the closets, I wonder if we really ever need anything else again!  Even the food pantry is too well stocked, but somehow I feel more secure with that. 

While acknowledging my impulse to head to the landscaping store to find just the right tool or hardware item, I’ve made an effort over the last few months to avoid shopping for the sake of shopping and really think about if we need something or not.  The shopping aspect has never really been a problem, but I just realize that I’ll buy things that I don’t really need sometimes.  So while I still make lists and think of things we need to buy to help finish this project or that, I’m now trying not to rush right out and buy what I think we need right away.   After a few days, some of those items don’t seem so important anymore, and the impluse to go shopping is not as strong.

Maybe it’s part of modern society and our conditioning.  When we shop or buy something at the store we feel like we’ve “done” something and that simple act of buying something will help our situation.  Too often all that we’ve done is decreased the cash in the bank or gone deeper in debt on the credit card. 

If you recognize that smiley face above, it seems to imply a certain level of satisfaction or happiness.  Combine that with a shopping environment, and it’s no wonder why the smiley face was chosen to be associated with price comparisons.  Many of us crave adventure, excitement and something “new.”   And whether we admit it or not, we try to fulfill many of those cravings by going shopping, getting a good deal, or finding something “special.”  Let’s face it, sometimes it really is fun and exciting, especially if you’re buying something you really want. 

But it’s short-lived satisfaction for the most part.  The experience and the excitement is momentary.  Far better to seek adventure and excitement in healthy, practical ways such as working outdoors, gardening, hiking or playing sports.

So while I’m in the midst of a host of spring cleaning chores, I’m working on getting all those other things accomplished that don’t cost much extra money to undertake.  If I really think about it, sometimes my desire to go shopping for “stuff we need” is a disguised effort to procrastinate or improve something else so I don’t have to deal with the stuff I don’t want to finish right now.

I’m no psychologist, but I’m sure there’s a host of other dysfunctional reasons that we go shopping, spend money and buy stuff we don’t need.   Sometimes it’s just plain fun.  But it’s too darn easy to go through money like crazy, much to the delight of the retail store business.    I’m still looking at the shopping issue, and trying to educate a child as well.  Even with kids, their eyes light up when they have a chance to buy something.  So we need to find balance and a healthy approach to spending money when we need to, and avoid the cycle of spending money for no reason at all.

Are there other strategies we can use to structure our shopping needs?  Credit and debit cards are really too easy to use.  Is something like the household budget really an effective tool to prevent binge shopping, or buying stuff we don’t need?   Not for me, at least a lot of the time.   Do you see a better way?    It’s a continuing issue for so many of us, and without really looking at the issue within the family, a lot of people are going to struggle financially while remaining stuck within the spending loop.  But it’s time to break free, to be a little more honest with ourselves, and to begin restructuring our goals toward positive, long term financial outcomes.

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