Myth #1: Buying that next thingy will save me loads of money.
Truth: Buying that next thingy will cost you thousands of dollars.
In a study by Business Insider, it was determined that nearly half of American households don’t save any money, not intentionally month-to-month, nor in our many bargain buys. However, we do spend nearly $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods. Yeah, on stuff we don’t even need. $1.2 trillion. Mark Whitehouse, of the Wall Street Journal, goes on to list things such as marshmallow peeps, hay, boats, jewelry, booze, gambling, and candy. The study does not include super-fast cars or bigger-than-necessary houses, so the sum of $1.2 trillion is probably conservative. We then spend $8 billion buying home organization systems (stuff to organize our stuff). And when your house runs out of space for all the stuff that organizes your stuff, you go rent a storage space, contributing to a $154 billion industry. We pay to store the stuff that stores our stuff so that we have room for more stuff. But you got the stuff at a great deal! Aren’t you saving money?
No. No, you’re not. I chuckle when I remember the times I’ve bought something on sale thinking, “Wow, I’m saving money!” only to realize that I had spent money I didn’t need on something I hadn’t thought I needed until I saw it there, gleaming on the discount shelf. I didn’t save money—I’d spent money. And I’d added another “thing” to another shelf. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 gave us a glimpse at what we really needed. Governments defined “essential” goods for us and only permitted their citizens to leave their homes to purchase these pre-defined items. In some countries, “essential” included beer and cigarettes (ironically, the very same things said countries heavily tax and make a lot of money from). In some countries, toilet paper was “essential” and in other countries, not. The restrictions on our purchases showed us what we actually needed in order to survive. It also made us realize how much want we took for granted. I’d like to believe it developed in us a sense of gratitude and awareness. The next stat cracks me up, but it should be part of our cost-tally. The Harris Interactive Report apparently found that twenty-three percent of adults pay their bills late, incurring late fees—because they lose the bills. Some of us pay larger bills because we can’t find the bills to pay them. Each month. So, you’re saving a few cents or dollars when you get the item on sale, but you’re still spending money. And it’s going to cost you to store that thing, whether it requires a shelf, a bin, or a drawer—or an additional storage unit. Or maybe you aren’t paying for an extra storage unit, but you live in a house larger than what you need, because you like all of the “storage space.” Instead of paying a monthly fee for storage to a storage company, you’re paying it to the bank. Many of us are also now paying to store our digital stuff, paying clouds or services to hang on to it for us because our computer drives are too full. And we’ve taxed the free amount of space that Dropbox gives. So, we add another few bucks a month to store our files, our apps, our photos, our videos, and our work. No, buying that thingy will not save you money.
For our next blog post, we will be doing a deep-dive into Myth #2: "Buying That Item Will Make Me Happy"