Spending Dilemma
So the "Economic Impact" section of this blog finally actually did something for me. I was in the Mall of America with Ghislaine, shopping. Yes, shopping at the Mall of America. We had planned to shop somewhere for tank tops, and she'd had a really bad day and preferred the Mall. I hadn't been there since I was about 11 years old, so I thought I'd check it out... new experience and all.
It wasn't until we'd been there and had some ice cream that the thought finally hit me... if I bought something there, I'd have to post on the internet that I'd been shopping at the Mall of America!!! I was completely horrified by the thought. I racked my brains for ways to get out of posting it. Could I just ignore any purchases made there? Could I get Ghis to buy everything for me, and buy something for her elsewhere? When I realized that would be cheating, I began to think about whether I really needed items from the Mall of America. All this time, I was so upset, that I didn't realize that the process I was going through was exactly the intended function of posting my spending to the internet. (I'm a bit slow that way, I guess.)
I ended up buying a new tank top at Forever 21 for $5.80 and seven used tank tops at Ragstock for $3 apiece... plus the Dairy Queen Blizzard, of course. I'm feeling embarrassed for the Forever 21 one (which I found before I knew about Ragstock), but I guess that serves me right and serves its purpose. I feel ok about the Ragstock stuff because they were used, it was a pretty good price, and saved me many hours of thriftshopping.
Posting my latest spending, I notice that I managed to spend $23.45 at Anodyne on just three visits. Most of this was due to being desperate for dinner while studying. But it would take me weeks to spend that much at the Onion. I need to go back to being more careful with this coffee shop spending. Food, it'll get you every time. It always feels like such a necessity. Silly.
Now that I'm out of school and living on loans while job-hunting, I think it's time to go back to my old spending habits. Which is NOT. I just got a car insurance bill, and am considering whether I could possibly forgo the car until winter. But what about road trips?!?
Comments
Oh my God, without wanting to add to your MOA guilt, did you know Forever21 has been acused of being a sweatshop? I think they are trying to fix that by keeping their workers in sunless dungeons where the media cannot acess them.
But as a fellow Macalester econ major from Romania (which I find highly ironic) once stated "the $1/day is better than nothing"...
Posted by: Eleni | June 10, 2006 4:39 PM