Confessions of a shopaholic
I spent this past month resisting the strong urge to ‘add to cart’ — mostly
A committed shopper takes us on her journey of spending, saving.
What tempts and compels us to shop the way we do? In this new column, writer and committed shopper Emily Tamfo takes us along on her monthly spending journey to find out.
My name is Emily and I have a problem: I love to spend money. My money, your money, money I don’t have — it doesn’t matter! I just want to shop and spend it all. (The time I spent $200 on different types of wine-infused jam springs to mind. Yes, jam!)
Although my therapist has repeatedly warned me this could be an unhealthy impulse, to me there are few things in life better than the sweet, sweet sound of a receipt printing or the *ping* of an email notification telling me my package is on its way. Since I’m sure many of you share this affliction, over the next few months I’ll be letting you in on my shopping diary, divulging what inspires, tempts and deters me to spend — even when I shouldn’t. First up: “Dry January.”
After spending most of my early 20s moving in and out of overdraft like the Cha Cha Slide, I had a rude awakening that changed my life forever: I am not Beyoncé.
Despite what my piles of receipts would suggest, I do not have an endless supply of lucrative endorsements to fund my shoe addiction, nor do I have a trust fund or safety net to rescue me from my own undoing. If I spend my grocery money on that new pair of Yeezys, there’s no call home to prevent my inadvertent hunger strike.
So, as much as it pained me to do so, in January 2012, I went cold turkey. I forced myself to put away my credit cards, pretend I hadn’t memorized all their numbers and expiry dates, and commit to at least one full month of “spendless” living to start my road to recovery. That was my first “Dry Jan.”
While most people’s Dry Jan is a month of sobriety to recover from the bottomless ladles of boozy eggnog, mine is about pressing pause on mindless, unnecessary
purchases. At the beginning, I had only one rule: no buying anything I didn’t really need.
The first year, I struggled to suppress the familiar tingle in my body I’d get when I passed an Aritzia sale. And I didn’t always stick to my own rules: I once relapsed by spending $75 on decorative mugs at HomeSense.
But in the years since my notBeyoncé revelation, each nospend January has become easier than the last — and it has helped me to confront my unhealthy relationship with money and material things. I realized that I was “one of those people” who shop as a form of self-soothing and avoidance (shocker, I know).
I was unhappy and stressed about school, family and relationships, and the ephemeral high of buying the newest anything distracted me from dealing with the burden of my issues. And although it worked temporarily, the repercussions
were always worse than the trigger, because I didn’t have the money to match the amount of soothing I needed.
Now that I’m older and my account balance no longer resembles an arctic temperature reading, I use Dry Jan to reset and redefine my needs, in a way that is both realistic and true to myself.
Now, I know that what I “need” evolves just as much as I do as a person, so creating an everlasting blanket rule is just going to lead to disappointment. I love all things fashion and beauty and, although neither is a “need” per se, both bring me joy — and joy is at the root of the self-care that nourishes me most.
The pandemic has changed how I approach my spending even more, despite the fact I was fortunate enough not to be financially impacted by COVID-19 closures. I now have an even better grasp on what it means to “need” versus “want” something. If I see something
online that intrigues me, I no longer immediately add to cart.
These days, when I feel the tingle coming on, I find a way to indulge in a small joy — something that makes me feel like me again, but doesn’t break the bank.
This Dry Jan, I kept it to three: a Fenty Gloss Bomb (because Instagram convinced me this would enhance my Zoom calls), a 100 Years of Love candle in Eyes Wide (the amber scent of which makes me feel like Cleopatra), and a pair of reading socks (which I previously made fun of people for owning, but now find both amusing and comfy).
Although none of these were necessary purchases, they were all under $35 and have made my isolation at home a little more bearable.
Money is such an enigma in so many ways. As a culture, our lives are framed by our efforts to make as much of it as possible, but then we spend equal time finding new ways to spend
it as quickly as possible (have you considered jam?).
What I’ve realized from this shopping exercise is that I want to be surrounded by things I truly love — not pretty but useless souvenirs of undiagnosed trauma. Thus, in my quest to one day have the option of bathing in champagne like Beyoncé, I will carry on doing Dry Jan to make sure I regularly rethink how and why I shop.
This year, I might even extend it to No Spend Feb.