Buy for the life you have, not the life you want

This is something that I have a hard time with, but knowing it sometimes helps me to not buy things which enables me to save money for the things I really care about, like travel: buy things for the life you have, not the one you want, and consider the word “enough”.

For example, today I was out and saw a stainless steel insulated growler that would have been perfect for a picnic I went on this summer. It was on sale at a very good price. But, that’s not a common thing for me to do, so while that would be nifty to have and I’d like large picnics to be something I’d commonly do, my life is such that we only manage to get a bunch of us together for a large picnic about once a year, so despite the good price, it’s still not something I should buy. And I didn’t. I will continue to use multiple smaller containers like I did already.

If you don’t have dinner parties for 10, you likely don’t need the fancy 50 piece dinner set no matter how perfect it is. If you love camping but rarely do, don’t spend a fortune on a fancy tent and a bunch of gear. If you don’t generally go to fancy dress parties, it may not be worth it to buy that nice dress even if it fits you perfectly. It’s hard to turn down great deals, but it’s a waste if you’ll rarely use an item and have to store it year after year.

I’ve fallen for the “great dress for a wedding/party” thing far too many times. Mostly, it’s resulted in me storing dresses that no longer fit me, were no longer my style, weren’t appropriate for the weather, or I just no longer wanted to wear, for years, and then donating them. It would have been much more cost-effective to just spend more money on a dress when I actually needed it (and would have taken less hassle and storage space over the years).

We are surrounded by bright and shiny things that entice us, but often we already have enough and buying more won’t make us happy, which is often what we really want. Yes, that pretty coffee cup would be wonderful to have on cold snowy mornings, but do I have enough as it is? Do I need another? And if it’s on sale, am I just buying it because it’s cheap, or would I still consider it if it wasn’t on sale? If not, see if you want to reconsider.

Another thing that has helped me particularly, is considering how much of a recent trip cost the item would pay for. Since many of my trips are quite affordable, I may find that that the new tv I’m looking at because it’s bigger would fund an entire multi-week trip to South East Asia. Suddenly, my sizeable (but not super huge) tv seems just fine.

Happy money saving for travel!