The Downward Spending Spiral You CANNOT Avoid!
Boy has marketing gotten a little out of hand. Am I right? You go to a store, and the person checking you out asks for your email. You tell them no, but they can be so pushy! You end up getting so frustrated and worn down that you give them your cell phone, email, home address, birthday, and just about anything just to pay your bill and get out of there. Somehow they wear you down enough that you give all this information out in front of strangers! So what do they do with this information, they bombard you with emails, text, calls, and mail to buy more and more STUFF. They now know what you usually buy and slam those pieces in your face through facebook ads, Instagram ads, ads on yahoo, emails, etc, the list goes on and on. Isn’t it a little creepy?
You get to a point where you want a restraining order from all the promotions, coupons, and constant marketing. You can’t find a quiet place to hide. They HAVE you now, they led you down a tunnel with no exit just like in a horror movie. Can you picture the man with the chainsaw chasing you and taking all your money? Haha!
But on a more serious note, they get you don’t they? They convince you to spend an extra $10 because what is an extra $10 in the end if you get $50 of BONUS cash to use at their store. Then you can’t just spend $50 the next time because there is a small condition that in order to get $50 off, you have to spend $150. BUT you don’t need anything! YET you still find something you can add to your wardrobe, and spend $300. So the extra $10 from the initial purchase ending up costing you $10+$300- the $50 coupon= $260. And if you are like me, you don’t do it at just that one store, you do it over and over again.
Just like I was telling my co-worker, I can’t go into Buy Buy Baby to return something because I end up spending more than the returned item costed. Or if I have a gift card, I ALWAYS spend more than the gift card. It’s like a law that you can’t spend the exact amount of the gift card, and you DEFINEITLY don’t want to spend a little under and get a gift card back with only $1.50 on it. At least that is what my old brain would tell me.
It is all a strategy to get us to buy more. We spend money we don’t have, on stuff we don’t need. We are running out of money and running out of space to but all that stuff! So we buy storage containers to put the stuff in and buy closets to put the stuff in, and bigger houses to put the stuff in. I don’t know about you, but I am sick of the stuff and am tired of spending money on stuff we don’t need. I guess you can say I am sick and tired! Are you?
So my New Year’s Resolution is to stop buying all this STUFF. Before I buy anything, I will ask myself one very simple BUT crucial question: Did I need this yesterday? If the answer is yes, then I probably do need it and will buy it. If the answer is no, then back on the self it goes! It can be that easy. All that STUFF we buy adds up, and can be used for a new house renovation, a car, a vacation, or for even bigger goals like college, weddings, retirement. Any of that sounds better than more STUFF. How about you?
Do you want to find a more fulfilling way to use your money? Use it on the stuff that adds to your life and gets you where you want to be living? Doesn’t that sound good?
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