Four Purchases You Should Probably Avoid (According to Some Internet Stranger)

As a self-avowed materialist and maximalist (maxi-materialist?), it may seem surprising that I have any rules or limitations on purchases. More is more, right? Well, no. I am fortunate to live a life of abundance, but it has been built on intentional accumulation. Less gives me more: more enjoyment from the things I own, and more time to enjoy them. The most important thing that intentional spending has allowed me to do is to buy back my time. A few years ago, following a series of unfortunate events, I had an existential epiphany and decided to radically rearrange the architecture of my life, pretty much top to bottom. That included taking a step back – or rather, sideways – with my career and moving into a different role; a role that I love and, more importantly, that allows me to work part-time. It was a huge leap to make at the age of 41 (particularly as the former primary income-earner in the family); one that has transformed my life in the best way, and one that was only possible because of choices my husband and I made up to that point.

Being intentional is hard when you exist in a late-stage capitalist society. Capitalism does not respect individual self-determination. It might pay lip service to it, because that helps it sell its products, but that is not the same thing. Capitalism wants to influence (aka dictate) our personal decisions to serve its interests, not to enable us to make the decisions that best serve our interests and values. Asserting our values through intentional living (and spending) will always feel like swimming against a strong tide. It’s hard work! But the rewards are immense.

There are many facets to living with intention, but I wanted to focus on spending in this post because in a capitalist system, money is undoubtedly the biggest lever of control at our disposal. Money is the tool for building our best lives. Consequently, people focus a lot on its accumulation – and, to be clear, that is important (you can’t use something you don’t have) – but not nearly as much on the other half of the equation, spending. To hoard money is, in my opinion, to render money useless; a tool is a tool because it does something. A tool that sits in a drawer, forever, is useless. On the flip side, using (spending) money without intention renders it meaningless. A tool is useful when it serves a useful purpose. Throwing it around at random doesn’t generally accomplish anything worthwhile. And remember: money is a finite resource. You can swing a hammer around for decades without running out of hammer; at a certain point, you can run out of money if you keep spending it … and there will always be more and more and more things to spend money on. That’s capitalism, baby.

Ok, enough philosophizing! Let’s talk about the 4 types of purchases I try to avoid in order to give myself the room (mentally and financially) to live (and spend) intentionally.

Occasion-Based Purchases

One of the strategies that companies have been leaning into a lot in recent years to sell us stuff is to tie product marketing to “special occasions”. This can be anything from specific holidays (Halloween, Valentine’s Day, etc.) to life events, whether rare or mundane (vacations, people’s weddings, girls’ brunch, date night, etc.). And that’s the thing to remember: anything can be turned into a “special occasion” if a company wants to sell you something bad enough. Do you always need a new thing, or multiple new things, for each of these occasions? I can’t answer that question for you, but I recommend that you ask it.

For me, this is the easiest category to ignore and cut out of my spending. It’s not that I won’t spend money on these occasions if they are things I enjoy, but the money is spent on the experience itself, not on accoutrements. If I need a bathing suit because I’m going on a vacation where I’ll be swimming, I will buy one – but I won’t buy a new one every time I go on a vacation. I will buy Halloween candy every year, but not Halloween decorations. [I actually don’t buy any seasonal décor because it’s not something that brings me joy, but I don’t judge people who love it and buy it, if they’re doing so in an intentional manner.] I love going to weddings, but I don’t think I’ve bought a new dress specifically for a wedding in … ever, actually. I have plenty of dresses, so I will not let the occasion of an upcoming wedding serve as an inducement to buy a new one.  

Keep in mind that, more often than not, special occasion-marketed products are offered at a cost premium. So not only are you being influenced to buy something that, quite likely, you wouldn’t have otherwise bought, you are paying extra for it.

Ego-Propping Purchases

I went back and forth on whether to reference “identity” or “ego” in describing this category, and if you’ve read my previous post on the self/identity conundrum, perhaps you might appreciate the distinction. I decided to go with ego because it gets to what I think is the root of the issue here: while we all, to some extent or another, buy things as an exercise in identity-making and/or identity-expression, there is a specific category of purchases that are driven by the need to influence how other people perceive us. This is different than saying: I love X therefore I buy Y. It’s saying: I want people to think I am X, therefore I buy Y.

In the first case, I am buying Y because it’s necessary to my own experience/expression of X. In the second case, I am not buying Y because it’s a necessary adjunct to my love of X, but because I think it’s necessary for other people to perceive me in a certain way. Here are some concrete examples from my own life to hopefully illustrate this point.

I buy books because I love to read and to have my own library. I do not buy books or have my own library because I want people to think I’m smart or well-read. I do not care if people think I’m smart or well-read. It’s nice if they do, but I find no value in spending any energy, time, or money trying to persuade them to do so.

I do not own a very nice car. My 2018 Mitsubishi Mirage is, for me, the perfect car. I paid for it in cash, and it gets me from point A to point B. That is the sum total of what I require from any vehicle – cheap, reliable, 4 wheels and an engine. I don’t like driving, and I don’t like cars, except as a necessary evil. I do not buy a luxury vehicle because I want people to think I’m well-off. I don’t not buy a small, basic, cheap car because I worry that people will think I’m not well-off. I don’t care what people think about my financial situation any more than I care that they think I’m smart.

If, for the purposes of this discussion, we define “ego” as that part of ourselves that is concerned with how other people perceive us, then I can definitively say that I do not, and have not for most of my adult life, made ego-propping purchases. And it is incredibly liberating. Chasing other people’s good opinion is a fickle, expensive, and ultimately meaningless endeavour. And, yes, that is me stepping up on a soapbox. Everyone has their own values. Spending your money based on their values leaves less time and money to devote to your values. That is the opposite of intentional.

And this is not, for the record, a question of one set of values being objectively better than another. Books are not better than cars in an absolute, objective sense. They are better to me, and that’s the key.

Life Upgrade Purchases

This category is, in some ways, connected to the previous but it also connects to another aspect of capitalism. Capitalism is predicated on the idea of constant growth, which is also sometimes presented as constant progress. We are told that everything, from population-level history down to the individual, follows an ever-upwards trajectory. To live is to constantly improve. If we’re not moving up, we’re failing.

There are many problems with this kind of thinking, about which we could talk for days and weeks. For the purposes of this post, I will stick to one facet of the issue which is the culturally-ingrained expectation that we continually upgrade our standard of living as soon as it becomes financially feasible to do so. Get a promotion and a raise? Buy a fancier bag, a better car, a bigger house. Why?  Because (A) it’s progress, and progress is the highest goal, and (B) more expensive things are inherently better, and you deserve better, don’t you?

You do deserve better, but you should also get to define what that means to you. A bigger house has its advantages, but it also has costs – not just in terms of purchase price and maintenance expenses, but opportunity costs. A bigger house requires a bigger (ongoing) investment of money, time, and energy. Making that investment comes at the expense of other things. Are those things also (or more) important to you as the big house? If so, progress might look different for you. Progress might not look like a bigger house but, say, more vacations. Or it can look like more of the same old, same old.

Here is something to consider: the less expensive your daily life is (relative to your income), the more control you have over it because fewer of your decisions will be dictated by demands that are “locked in”. A smaller house leaves me with more money, time, and energy to apply to other parts of my life which, for me, might be just as critical to the architecture of my ‘best life’ as the house.

And here’s something else to consider: the Diderot effect. The French philosopher bought a gorgeous new dressing gown, then realized that everything else he owned looked shabby by comparison, and he suddenly felt the urge to replace those things with nicer, more expensive versions. This is a universal experience, and one that is very hard to resist. What it means is that there is always a danger that, in “upgrading” one part of our lives, we open the door to a desire for other upgrades, and on and on.

Here, please let me emphasize that I do not advocate for living like a pauper (unless you like that sort of thing) or never buying nicer things than you currently own. What I’m saying is that it’s important to be mindful of the factors at play, and their impact on your decisions. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading – without considering how the decision aligns with your values and your vision for your ‘best life’ – is a risky proposition. Proceed with caution.

Emotional Regulation Purchases

I’ll be honest: this was the hardest category for me to get under control. Especially during that period of my life when I had not yet achieved a clear vision of my ‘best life’ and a clear articulation of my personal values. Those things are a wonderful bulwark against emotional (dys)regulation purchases. They are both anchor and compass in a world that comes at you very fast and hard, and tosses you around like a ship in a storm. Before I had a clear vision of what I wanted my life to look like, I was often very dissatisfied with my day to day. And because I had nothing to work towards (i.e. no sense of purpose), I looked around for things that could provide a burst of satisfaction in the moment.

You know what I’m going to say next: capitalism loves to offer us little treats. They’re packaged as rewards for our hard work, but they primarily serve to keep us working hard. (A) because they cost money, and (B) because they don’t actually really satisfy our true need (for purpose) so we keep buying more and more to fill the hole.

Life needs meaning, and meaning comes from a sense of purpose. Purpose requires intention. Intention takes effort. The way our current world works, we are given very little time and space to make that effort. We are tired, over-scheduled, over-worked, stressed out. It’s easier to buy something to feel good in the moment, then to try to find the time and mental energy to think about what would make us happy in the long run.

While I did, in the past, make plenty of emotional regulation purchases, I was lucky – their negative impact was minimized by several factors. One, I had a stable and comfortable income, which gave me a bigger cushion to manage the impact of my “little treats”. Two, as noted, I was not buying things to impress other people or upgrade my life, which meant that my “little treats” were, in the scheme of things, relatively inexpensive. [Shopping secondhand for most of my adult life helped a lot too.] So the dents were small, relative to the cushion. That being said, the best thing I did for myself, was to address the underlying issue – that was far more impactful than either (A) getting myself a bigger cushion, or (B) buying cheaper “little treats”.

One last thing to add here: one of the ways in which I managed “losing” 40% of my income when I switched to a part-time role was by drastically reducing my “little treat-ing”. And it was surprisingly easy to do because – and this is key – by that point I had rearranged my life to align with my purpose, vision, and values. I don’t need “little treats” to get through the day now, because I love my day-to-day as it is … and part of why I love it is because I changed my work-life balance. Put it another way: before, I was working more hours to have more money to spend on things to make up for the fact that there wasn’t enough time in my life for meaning because I was spending so much time working – to have money for things that didn’t add true meaning to my life. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ok, one last last thing (I promise!): What I am describing here is the very definition of first-world problems so if that doesn’t apply to your life, you can go ahead and ignore everything I’ve just said. Not everyone is running the same kind of race, so I will never generalize my experiences and opinions. I would love to hear yours, so please feel free to share in the comments. We all learn more that way 🙂