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| Two Maybelline pretties I bought this week |
There's about 45,000 cosmetic products out there. And if you're like me, you want about 43,961 of them. Seriously. So how do you decide when to pull the trigger and spend some cash? To each his own on when/how/why you want to spend your money, but I want to tell you how I decide to spend. I've decided to break this up into two posts so I can say everything I want to say on this subject...which is quite a bit!
As you already know from the origination of the blog, Derek and I are Dave Ramsey enthusiasts. AKA we're stingy with our money. Kind of. Basically, we try to budget and not waste money. Within our budget, we're each allotted $65 of "blow money" every month. No, that's not drug money, hah, that's blow as in spend-on-whatever-you-want-moolah. We include eating out individually in that category, so $65 really doesn't go too too far for each of us. With such a small budget I must choose what I buy very wisely!
For starters you should know that I do not include my "must haves" in this budget (don't worry, Derek has OKed this!) - for me this means mascara, concealer, and foundation. If I want to buy additional mascaras, concealers, foundations that DOES count as a blow-money purchase. Now that that's out of the way, let me tell you the 3 steps I follow when I'm deciding what I'm willing to blow my money on:
1) I think about it - I mean really think about it. How often will I use the product? Will it go bad before I use it up? Do I have other products like this already?
2) I weigh the price against other things I may want to spend my money on - This is going to sound like a joke, but I often times think of money values with the scale of "how many Subway sandwiches will this cost me?" - seriously. I love me some Subway! I now also use the weight of 'how many lipsticks could I buy instead?"
3) I stalk the product - I watch multiple YouTube reviews, read articles, gaze longingly at it a few times in stores.
Those steps may sound extreme, but it keeps me from making impulse buys that I'll later regret. In Part II of this post I'll further discuss how I decide when to spend, and discuss how I choose colors of whatever items I buy (credit to Leah Graham for requesting this topic!)
I love the advice about "stalking" the product. It's not like it will kill you to wait a week or two for the purchase. This has helped me a lot in other areas of buying.
ReplyDeleteDo you put your $$ to blow in an envelope or is it a mental note in your checking?
Our blow money is ALWAYS cash! This way, we can blatantly see how much money we have left to spend!
ReplyDelete