On Recognizing the Way We Spend

One of my favorite activities is quietly freaking out about how much money I have in the bank.

Recently, I sat down at my computer on Sunday night armed with a large glass of water, a Kit Kat and a mission: to buy a new bathing suit.

J. Crew was having a sale; I clicked. ASOS was too; I clicked. Old Navy and H&M weren’t; I clicked anyway. I scrolled thru tabs in a fugue state. I texted pictures of bathing suits to my sister, clamoring for an opinion, or at least the tiniest bit of reassurance that what I was doing was okay. I measured my body against the measurements on the website, rifling through the Ziplock bag that holds a half-finished knitting project and putting the tape measure against my flesh. After a bleary-eyed hour of deliberation, I purchased a bathing suit — on sale, naturally — and paid for the faster shipping, too.

Two weeks ago I purchased a backpack that is smooth, shiny pleather, roughly the color of a peach Crayola crayon, with the full intention of seamlessly transitioning from faded tote bag to a Person Who Wears A Backpack. The weekend the backpack arrived, I ordered a pair of Birkenstocks on eBay and bought another pair of sandals on a Sunday before noon, striding into the store with confidence, trying them on, and leaving with them in my bag in minutes.

Every Tuesday or Wednesday, I make a secret pilgrimage to the good H&M and contemplate purchases, touching the cheap fabric and taking mental notes. Every Friday, I go back and buy what I wanted, telling myself that the fact that it’s still there is fate. I have been spending money as if its presence was as sure as the water that flows out of the tap in the kitchen and I’m not entirely sure why.

It could be job dissatisfaction or the impending arrival of warmer weather or the need to fill my physical space with material goods as means of exerting control over my environment. All of those feelings are valid, though I’d argue that another dress made of cheap jersey is not more Band-aid than actual solution. It might be because I’ve lived in New York for long enough to realize that I should cultivate some sort of look that doesn’t rely heavily on unintentional holes and stains from the ghosts of burritos past. Most likely, though, it’s because spending money — even if you don’t have it — feels good.

I am the antithesis of Marie Kondo and her gentle exhortations to purge my possessions of everything that doesn’t bring me joy. Nothing I own brings the long-term, evergreen joy she espouses; I’m about the quick sparks instead of the long game. This is habitual behavior, honed over years of buying magazines when I know I should just subscribe and treating every out of state trip as an opportunity to buy something new. The only difference is that now I know the money I’m spending will come back.

By virtue of a miracle and constant, consistent hustling, I have a savings account. Its balance rarely dips below $2,000; this is not a brag, but a statement of extreme pride. I funnel extra money into my savings account, but move money out of it when needed. It is the cushion I never had, allowing me a freedom with the money I do have that feels the tiniest bit dangerous. I make more money now. The fact that it’s reliably, always there every 15th and last day of the month is enough for me to loosen the grip I have on my finances and spend freely. I am risk-averse; the savings account softens the blow.

One of my favorite activities is quietly freaking out about how much money I have in the bank and back-of-the-envelope-ing what I can spend per day until I get paid again. This system — dividing the money I have by the amount of days until the money pellets are re-upped — is nothing more than a self-soothing mechanism. Rarely do I ever spend $68 on a weekday, but understanding that I have a threshold makes me feel better. Historically, this arithmetic has been a constant in my life. Now, I haven’t completely stopped, but it occurs less and less these days. Maybe it is just my savings account, whispering quietly that everything is going to be okay, but I like to tell myself that I’ve relaxed.

My attempts at responsibility with my finances look a little bit like a child’s imitation of their parent cleaning the counter or mopping the kitchen floor: the motions are almost right, but the execution could use a little work. Sometimes eating a soft boiled egg and a piece of toast with jalapeño jelly in the morning instead of buying coffee and a biscotti feels like the most responsible, virtuous, financially-secure decision I will make. The money saved by not paying the overpriced Swedish coffee shop $7 every morning is immediately funneled into getting my eyebrows threaded or buying a chapstick and a magazine that I will read in an hour, tops. The decision to be “responsible” allows me to be frivolous. This is an eternal push and pull that I will fight for my whole life but I’m okay with it because now I recognize my patterns.

Sometimes money is there, in quantities so large that we don’t know what to do with it, and sometimes it’s not. Most of the time, it hovers somewhere in the middle: a weird in-between spot that makes me feel alternately very wealthy and very poor. Regardless of how much I have at any given time, for the moment, I can tell myself that it will always come back.

Megan Reynolds is an associate editor at The Frisky. She lives in New York.

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