Make Money Not Excuses Review: But I Have Nothing To Wear

May 9th, 2008

Make Money Not Excuses Review: But I Have Nothing To Wear

For the foreseeable future, every Friday afternoon I will be reviewing a section of Jean Chatzky’s Make Money Not Excuses and how it relates to me and my financial situation and outlook. The first review is here, Chapter 1 is here, Chapter 2 is here, and Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are here.

Love to shop? The next chapter of Make Money Not Excuses is especially for you. I have nothing to wear is about more than just clothes - it is about the internal love of shopping. Yes, I know not every woman has it (and many men have it as well) but the desire to shop is in many of us, even when we don’t need to.

And that’s basically the point of this chapter. Even when we say we “need” to shop, often, it isn’t really need, it is a want. There are definitely times when we need to shop. But as I illustrate with my grocery shopping analyses, even when shopping is needed, sometimes wants creep into that picture as well. There is nothing wrong with shopping, per se, but when indulging is a higher priority than our overall financial well-being, it helps to take a step back and see what it really going on. Chatzky says that knowing what prompts you to shop can help you channel that desire into more productive pursuits. She talks about unconscious shopping - when we shop just to shop, which is different from shopping to fulfill a need or even to fulfill a specific want. Sometimes this is indicative of a bigger problem like compulsive shopping, but sometimes, it is because we’ve associated shopping in our brains with certain feelings, and when we feel this way, we unconsciously gravitate towards shopping. The twelve reasons besides want need that she identifies for shopping are:

Because you’re feeling blue (retail therapy)
Because you want to feel powerful
Because you want to be someone else
Because you just don’t want to be you
Because you deserve it
Because you’d rather shop than go to the movies (bonding)
Because no one - and I mean no one - can tell you what to do
Because you need a friend (or at the very least a compliment)
Because you’re on autopilot
Because you don’t want to die
Because it looked good at the time
Because you can’t stop

And, as everything in the book, not everything applies to every person. The book goes into detail explaining each of these, and I found myself in quite a few more than I would have previously realized. I like to shop. I enjoy it. And I realized that some of the time, I divorce “shopping” from the end result of “possessing”. I may see something in a store that sparks my interest and I think I want it, but I don’t think through to picturing myself using it in the future, I just focus on the immediate wanting it. These are the things that invariably end up in a closet somewhere after half a dozen (or less) uses. I also do this with children’s clothing. I’ll see something, on sale or at a yard sale, that I think is cute, and I won’t consider if my child actually needs it, or even think past it being cute to if it suits my child. I will bring it home, it’ll go into rotation, and either never get worn because my child already has 15 other t-shirts or pants or whatever, or it’ll be something my child never wears like overalls. I used to dress my son in overalls all the time when he was 18 months old. He is three, almost four, so that was a long time ago, and he refuses to wear overalls now. Yet once in a while, somehow, I buy overalls.

So what to do? Chatzky says to stop shopping and start living, and lists 5 crucial questions to ask yourself when you shop:

What am I doing here?
What was the trigger that sent me here?
How do I feel?
Is the thing I am about to reach for something I need? What happens if I don’t buy it?
What happens if I do buy it?

Starting to ask myself these questions once I read this book has all but broken me of one of my past favorite pastimes - clearance shopping. And that is a good thing. I used to head straight for the clearance rack of any store I went into. And, in fact, would go into stores just to check out their clearance rack. And yes - great bargains can be found on the clearance aisle. But if the bargain is something I won’t really end up using, don’t need, and almost don’t want, how much of a bargain is that? I would acquire stuff just to acquire it. Breaking myself of that habit has gone a long way towards improving my finances as well as the state of clutter in my house. This is not to say I never visit a clearance rack - but now I only do when I have a specific need for something I think I could find there, and I try my best to not pick up other random deals unless they make sense for me and my family. Staying out of Target completely has done a lot more for me than hitting the clearance racks there every Wednesday right after they do their big weekly markdown at the one near my house.

At the end of the chapter, Chatzky addresses a topic that she’s written another separate book on, involving her debt diet. She doesn’t go into a lot of detail here about it, but basically, all this shopping may have put us into debt, and this is a plan for getting out. She equates getting out of debt to a diet because it makes it easier for many people to wrap their head around. The rules of the diet include but are not limited to not using credit, making a list when you shop, shopping online vs at stores, tracking your spending, and more. There isn’t a lot of new information here but it is presented in a way that may make it more accessible to some people - if I wasn’t fully immersed and obsessed with getting out of debt already, this part of the chapter might have spoken to me more.

So all in all - stop shopping to shop. If you enjoy shopping (like I do), know why you enjoy it, and don’t make the acquisition the point of shopping. Next week we’ll look at saving and investing - no, it’s not too complicated to understand! And it is important to start.