Spend vs Save vs Stuff

The Internet is a lovely place.Through some link-following, I ended up on a Forbes article about two roommates doing something called a "Buy Nothing Year", which led me to the Buy Nothing Year website, which sort of detailed half of their progress through their experiment of buying nothing for a year. There wasn't a whole lot on the website, and the Forbes article didn't give too many details, either.

But, from so little information, it brought a lot of things to mind.
We really do have an odd relationship with money and stuff. 

I love my stuff. That's

why I have so much of it. I hold onto things rather easily, and I like getting new things.

A new pack of stickers makes for an awesome day, and it can always rationalize it because they're 1$. But then that makes it easier to say "yes, you're coming home" to the 2$ Hello Kitty garden flag that is adorable, even though you don't have a garden. Then you remember there was an adorable stamp you saw on Instagram that should be around the craft store somewhere, so you search about for that, and can't find it, but you do find two more packs of stickers, on clearance, for less than 1$ total. Oh, and you were asked to get a candle while you were out, because the old one was dead.
But all you intended to get from the craft store was elastic.

That happened to me. On the 13th of January, actually.
The order in which those things happened is a bit off, but the idea is there - it was cheap, so I was able to say yes. In the end, I spent twice as much as I had intended to spend when I left the house.

It's easy to want things. It's easy to say that something is a need, when it's really not.
It's easy to say you should spend less money to have more of it.

This is something I struggle with. Because I can almost always justify a purchase. That's how I have two Project Life core kits. And a Filofax, a Kikki-K, a Happiedori, and a Franklin Covey I found at Goodwill. I didn't need any of them, but between the Mister and I, we both came to the conclusion that I could have them. And that's all just in the past three months, mind you. Let's not discuss all my other collections about the house (and there's a lot of them).
And yet, how much of that is necessary items? How much gets used on a regular basis? Let's not discuss that, either!

I have enough. I really do.
While there are a lot of things I would like to have, there isn't anything that I need, beyond normal groceries.
So why do things besides that keep coming home with me? When I know that I have enough?

Because it's easy to rationalize purchases. It's cheaper than something else, or it's on sale, or you just really, really want it.

And on top of having enough for a reason to buy less, we want a house. Really badly.
We hate our apartment, and we had fully intended to move out almost three years ago, to rent a house, but then changed our minds to see about buying one. Of course, we didn't have the funds. We weren't even close for a long time. And now, we only have one income. So that goal is even farther away.

But in the mean time, what are we doing to help that goal? Buying stuff that we want! Which, in reality, negates progress towards that house.

I would rather have a house than a truckload of stickers.
It's just harder to see it that way, when one thing is a lot farther off than the other.

But, really, the best way to work towards that house right now?
Remembering that I have enough. Saying no to those stickers - even if they're adorable and they're only 1$. I will survive without them. I have enough.

~Havok