Not shopping - it’s harder than you think!
Posted by: SueFor me, anyway. With 2010, I’ve decided - among other things - to exorcise the spend-demon who seems to have jumped into my body a few months ago. Really, I don’t know exactly when it started, but at some point, I pretty much stopped thinking through purchases before I made them, and just fast-forwarded to “Buy. Buy.” Or “bye-bye, money”. Same thing. (I do have a cool digital SLR camera now, though…)
See, there it is again. Spend-demon just wrote the camera comment.
New year, new me. I love New Years for that reason. Well, for several reasons, but that’s one of them. So I came up with a plan for the money in 2010 - with my husband’s full blessing. I later found out just how full the blessing was. Anyway, what is this grand plan you ask (or don’t ask)? We’re going to try our best to live just on my husband’s take home pay. What we see after taxes in a very high tax state. What we see after maxing out the 401K - and putting additional money in it, because we’re that old. What we see after everything’s taken out. And then we’re going to bank my entire take home pay. And to do this, a hiatus from recreational shopping is a must. Really thinking through the purchases - we have to do that. Especially after the past few months.
Hey, I could use “I’m staying out of stores” to explain my long absence from the shopping blog. Hmmm…
The first challenge to this new, umm, challenge happened a couple of days ago. And I failed the challenge. Or I would have, had it not been for my husband talking me down.
As I may have mentioned a time or several, we live in Wisconsin. Where it snows. Lately, it snows an awful lot in winter. A number of years ago, we decided that we were getting kind of old for shoveling, and bought a snowblower. A small snowblower, because we really don’t have a long driveway, or a huge walkway. And it’s held up pretty good. But our old driveway (we had a new one poured last year) really did a number to the paddles on the snowblower. These days, I need to take a shovel and go over and clean up what the snowblower left behind. It’s still a good bit better than not having a snowblower. But some of our neighbors have really nice snowblowers. Big snowblowers. With headlights. (Don’t ask why I’m so obsessed by headlights on snowblowers, because I don’t know - but I am.) We finally got a decent sized snowfall last week (by that I mean more than the 2 inches at a time we were getting.) And of course, I was outside again, shoveling up the bits left behind. When into my brain pops this thought: We need a new snowblower! The following conversation - or something close to it - takes place:
Me: Do you think the hardware stores still have snowblowers?
Husband: Why?
Me: Well, we can get a new one. A big one. With headlights!
Husband: The one we have is perfectly fine. I’ll replace the paddles after snow season is over.
(My comment for clarification: That would be …June. We’ve had snow in May. More than once.)
Me: But it’s…old. And small. We’ll need a bigger one when we move up north.
Husband: Then we’ll buy one up north.
Me: But wouldn’t it be cool to have a BIG snowblower? With headlights!
(There I go again - what IS it with me and headlights?)
Husband: I thought we were going to try and live off only my salary.
Me: But I have money in other accounts in the bank that we can use.
Husband: Sue, you really aren’t grasping the concept of living off MY SALARY ONLY, are you?
And he’s right. He’s SO right. I really do need to work on this. I mean, the living-on-one-income was my idea in the first place.
I’ve always said that I don’t like to shop. I guess it’s time to walk the walk. Oh, yeah, I’ll still be blogging about shopping. Maybe other things, too. But hopefully, I won’t be blogging about buying a honkin’ snowblower (with headlights).
January 31st, 2010 at 9:34 am
Oh my gosh! ROFL! Sue, you DO have a thing for headlights! LOL! It’s good that your husband was there to talk you down. That can be the downfall of many couples; both like spending!
Oh and sure glad you decided that you could come back and share your ‘not shopping’ challenge for the shopping blog. I truly LOVE reading about your adventures! HUGS