Saving by Spending

You hear this phrase a lot when reading personal finance articles, usually in conjunction to making some kind of initial investment in the hopes of being paid dividends off of it in the future. On Ramet Sethi's blog "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" he uses it in one post to describe investing in a personal finance book, to help you save money down the road. As a poor girl I personally didn't care for the phrase since I really had no applicable use for it, that is until yesterday.

Yesterday while I was on my hour lunch I was idly wandering around Target when I ended up in the accessory section. More specifically in front of a wall of wallets. I had been contemplating buying a new wallet for a couple weeks now but could not really justify it beyond "I just want one". However, it only took one look for me to fall in love with a purple clutch wallet. I personally have a weakness for wallets, or possibly I'm just fickle, but I tend to buy a wallet and run it into the ground for 5 or 6 months and then buy a new one. So as I sat there contemplating the purchase I started to think about the concept "Saving by Spending". Considering my nature it made perfect sense for me to buy the $10 wallet from target and get my money out of it for the next 6 months and then trade up when I was sick of it. While I would love to have the $100 or $200 genuine leather wallet from Coach or Burberry or L.A.M.B what was the point of spending all that money for something I wouldn't use after 6 months. With that kind of money I could buy 10 wallets! That would last me 3-5 years (depending on the severity of my fickleness).

Eureka! Saving by Spending!

On the flip side, as I took a gander at the sunglasses I knew I was on the opposite side of the spectrum for this accessory. I stick by my sunglasses until death do us part so I confidently continued past them knowing that my Chanel's would serve me well for the next couple years.

I left yesterday enlightened, and with the $15 old Loo Loo would have spent on the sunglasses too still in my pocket.