I wish I had a picture to post. Alas, I don’t even know the brand–it may have been Alex & Chloe. *sigh*
For most of us trying to live a frugal life, I would assume we do the mental checklist before buying something.
- “Do I need it?”
- “Can I get this for less elsewhere?”
- “Do we have the money right now to pay for this?”
- “Could I better serve the family by buying something else?”
When I’m buying something non-essential, like, oh, jewelry, I’m even more inclined to carefully weigh my answers. And so it was a few weeks ago; I was on one of my favorite sample-sale sites, Hautelook.com, when I saw a necklace.
It had a fine black-anchor like chain, and three charms: a grey pearl, an anchor, and a ship’s wheel. It may not sound that cool, but it was SO. Awesome. I wanted it, and I wanted it badly. But, it was $40.00. Who spends $40.00 on a necklace that’s not exactly an everyday sort of necklace OR a fancy event necklace? So I hemmed and hawed, and since these “sales” only last a limited time, I let it expire without purchasing it. We didn’t need it, I don’t need it, we didn’t have a ton of spare cash.
And…I regret it. I look at other discount stores like Nordstrom Rack, Marshalls and TJ Maxx hoping to see it–I Google descriptions, hoping it’ll pop up on eBay. No luck. So I think I’ve learned that yes, I can regret not buying something…which I really didn’t think was possible, telling myself “You can regret buying something, but you don’t regret not buying something!”
And now, if I see something that I have that feeling about…I just might buy it. Suppose you can’t beat intuition!
