Beware of spending triggers

The place where I work part time is right next to a coffee house. Almost time I go to work there, I stop in next door for a cup of coffee before I go and teach my class. I've made a habit of leaving time for this, have a routine for it.

That's crazy to me.

I have always been the kind of person who couldn't save money by giving up lattes because I didn't buy them. I make my coffee at home, when I'm drinking it, and put it in a travel mug if I need to go somewhere. So why, oh why, do I need to buy a $2 cup of coffee every time I go to work now?

It started when I was still working two jobs. After a full day of teaching, it was a treat - and a help in some ways - for me to get a cup of coffee before turning around and teaching for another three hours. I convinced myself that I deserved it, that I was working so hard and making so much extra money that it was easy to write off the $2 for a cup of coffee as just a necessary expense. It made me feel better and gave me a boost, and in a lot of ways that I do understand, that made it worth it to me.

But at some point that changed. I'm not sure when, but at some point in the process, getting coffee became something I did not because I was tired, not because I wanted it, but because I was on my way to work. I don't derive any particular joy from the cup of coffee, I don't feel like I really need it, I just get it because that's what I do. Now, I'm not opposed to splurging and buying a chocolate croissant once in a while if it makes me happy, but if I'm spending money on coffee just out of habit? That's just a waste.

I think most of us probably have some spending triggers, some circumstances that trigger us to buy something that we otherwise would never buy. So maybe it's time to examine some of those spending triggers and see which ones make sense and which ones don't.

My spending weakness

I am always fond of the confessional style of personal finance blogposts, so I thought I would spill the beans on my own weakness. My biggest spending weakness, my gazingus pin as the authors of Your Money or Your Life would call it, is eating out.

I like restaurants. A lot. We eat out at least once a week, sometimes two or three times. We don't go to super-expensive restaurants, we go to small local places, but we can still easily spend $10 each on dinner, plus tax, plus tip.

Now, I know compared to a lot of other people my age, I don't really eat out that much. A lot of my friends, many of whom are single and a surprisng number of who are in grad school, eat out most nights. They dont', however, consider themselves frugal, and they aren't (necessarily) trying to pay off significant amounts of student debt.

Sometimes it seems silly to me to save 50 cents a week on electricity by shutting off a power supply or unplugging my phone charger, and then to go out and spend $25 for dinner for 2 in a restaurant, when I could make dinner at home for $5. At the same time, I really do like restaurants, and I really don't necessarily like having my phone charger plugged in. Part of frugality means that you save money in areas that aren't important to you so that you can spend it on things that are important to you.

But, while eating out once a week, in a sit down restaurant, is a treat and really does make me happy, two or three times a week doesn't really make me any more happy than once. A lot of the time I eat out because it's easier, because I'm feeling uncreative, because I'm sick of the food I have in the house. I get that the solution to that is to include more different meals, to experiment, to play, to have fun in the kitchen, but none of that is as easy as it sounds. I read through cookbooks and cooking blogs and touch everything in the grocery store, and I still feel uninspired.

So, if you kicked the eating out habit, how did you do it? Or if you have another spending weakness that you beat, how did you do it?

Retail Therapy

I've been having a rough time lately. I feel like I'm either working, working, or trying to get caught up all the time. I'm cranky and tired and miserable and starting to get sick.

So tonight, I came home from work, flopped on my couch and turned on a re-run of Gilmore Girls (I'm sorry, I can't help myself . . it's the season when Rory gets together with Logan and Emily tries to break up Loralei and Luke. . . I was too busy in college having a life to have watched it the first time around). Lying on the couch in a state of semi-consciousness, I almost started crying when I remembered that I had laundry to do, my husband was leaving for a business trip at 5 tomorrow morning, and I had to email 5 tutoring clients.

After pulling myself together, making, eating and cleaning up after dinner, and finishing 1.5 loads of laundry, I jumped in my car to run to Sam's Club and see if I could get my tire patched and get some gum for my husband. The tire bay closed at 7. I got there at 7:05.

Walking around Sam's in search of gum, all I could think was how much I wanted to buy a cake, or a movie, or a trashy magazine, or SOMETHING, something to make me feel better about my crappy, crappy life.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I have never been a recreational shopper. I didn't even know this impulse was in me. Why, why, would I think that buying something would make me feel better? Is it some inherent part of my brain chemistry, or has it been programmed there by years of marketing (hmmm, perhaps that episode of Gilmore Girls didn't help)?

This, I guess, is the key to frugality: not having self control or good stewardship when it's easy, but having it when it's hard. Because I didn't, in the end, buy anything. I realized that while I probably do deserve a cake in some sense, and it might make me feel indulgent or worthy or even momentarily blissful, it's not something I actually want and it really won't make me happy. I also realized that, while I do feel bad and I do have a right to, my life is of course not crappy. Rather than another trashy magazine or lame chick flick, I need to invest in some quiet time for exercising, meditating, even folding laundry.

Knowing that, and being wise and composed enough to say it even when I feel as overwhelmed and anxious as I have, is more of an accomplishment than any number on my bank statement.