My Broken Coin — a fellow personal finance blogger — wrote a post on how she spent $8600 on shopping in 2012. That led me to checking out my own stats to see how much I spent on shopping last year.
$17,617!!!
$9164.78 on clothing(!)
$4,456.99 on “shopping general” (mostly Amazon.com, yikes)
$1,272.98 on “sporting goods” (camping stuff for my vacation)
$858.67 on makeup
$811.76 on hobbies
$187.81 on electronics
That’s ridiculous as it doesn’t even include my food costs. Now, I choose to live in a place where rent is $650 / month with roommates so I can afford the overrages of my shopping addiction, but I’m not sure that even adds up anymore. A 1br apartment that’s comparatively nice to my current shared 3br would cost me $1800 a month minimum, and in this location probably more like $2200. So I could spend $18600 more in rent, or, well, clearly I can spend that all on clothes, makeup and household items. Or I can just force myself not to shop for anything other than necessities for a year.
Last year I let myself be tricked by the growth of AAPL. I kept checking my networth and while I wanted to save $50k last year from income and investment growth, I didn’t factor in how one stock would grow so sharply only to then drop soon after the conclusion of the year. Now, instead of being over $200k and well on my way to $250k networth, I’m still watching each paycheck bring me back up to the $200k mark as my stocks drop. That means this year I need to be much, much more frugal than last year. And it starts with curbing my shopping addiction.
That is going to be hard because I just told myself that I need new clothes for work to look more professional, but I can probably make due with what I have. I’m on a serious diet right now and I’ll be losing a lot of weight this year, so there’s no point in spending money on clothes until I actually get to a stable weight again.
So far, in 2013, I’ve spent…
$723.45 on shopping
$415 on electronics (iPhone 5 + gift for sister)
$143.68 on makeup
$125.72 on clothing
$38.95 on shopping general
… that’s not perfect, but if I stuck to that rate of spending I’d spend $8681.40 in 2013 vs $17k. It would be better if I could spend under $300 per month on shopping, or even less. I do have a shopping addiction (even if I don’t buy fancy designer clothes, $17k per year IS an addiction) and if I want to hit my $250k goal this year, I’m going to have to put a lid on it. That $17k spent last year could have bought me a new car this year. Ugh, now I’m upset at myself.
I too, spent about $9000 on shopping in 2012.
I'm on a new lifestyle change now, and am avoiding temptation as much as possible.
My new "shopping" will be saving my money in my investing accounts by buying index funds.
Mochi and Macarons recently posted..Investing Series: What to look out for when you’re investing (fees and other tactics)
Who needs that much in makeup?? I don't even spend that in a year (what you've spent in the current year) and that includes replacing stuff every six months.
I like to buy nice makeup at Sephora — last year I had a perfume kick and spent way too much on perfume, but I have quite enough of that now to last me a while. I definitely need to stay out of sephora and off of their website. I rarely wear a lot of makeup but when I do I like having options.