Why Do I Spend Money On Stupid Shit?

Who am I trying to impress?

A slight deviation from my usual articles this week.

I have a folder on my computer called ‘Thinking Out Loud’ - a safe space to brain dump when I have lots of thoughts going through my head. Usually it starts with a question and more often than not it ends without an answer.

Occasionally I will dip into it and stick one up here either a) When I feel like what I’m thinking is worth sharing, or b) when I have no material/time for my regular weekly column.

This week is option B so I will take no offence if you want to leave now and move onto someone else who has put in a bit more effort this week.

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Why do I spend money on stupid shit?

I spent £100 on a pair of plain white Calvin Klein trainers this week. They were completely white with no distinctive logo, just a subtle white embossed CK on the tongue and heel.

OK, so £100 isn’t crazy money for a pair of shoes but what got me thinking about this particular purchase was that there was a shop next door where I could have bought a pair of plain white shoes for £20 that would look indistinguishable to the ones I bought.

So why did I spend five times that on these?

On first reflection it seems I bought them because they were more expensive, not in spite of it.

Who was I trying to impress?

I could argue it was for myself but I’m not convinced.

I don’t know who the following quote is attributed to but I use it a lot:

“When you look good you feel good and when you feel good you do good.”

I mostly use it when I’m trying to justify paying five times more than necessary on a pair of trainers.

I’m not a wealthy man. My wife and I earn decent salaries but that comes with a catch. Before our respective companies hand over the cash every month, they expect us to show up to work to earn it.

Bastards.

My kids range from five to nine years old and while the nine year old thinks she is a nineteen year old, they’re still too young to look after themselves. Coupled with the fact that three quarters of their grandparents are pushing up daisies, and the remaining quarter (while most helpful), isn’t fit to look after the three of them for any more than a day at a time, we have to put them into full time childcare.

And in Ireland, childcare costs £5000 per hour.

Or at least it feels like it does.

Someday, we tell ourselves, I will be able to spend £100 on a pair of trainers without having to write about it to help me sleep.

On a related note, Mary and I spent an hour walking the aisles of a luxury shopping centre this week.

Louis Vuitton, Channel, Gucci and Rolex all featured.

(Side note, so did Meile the washing machine company. Mary has a Meile washing machine and tumble dryer on our wish list for when the house is finished which I will swiftly be removing)

Mary has been promising herself a nice handbag for many years but there is always a more important hole for the money.

We stumbled upon this shopping centre on a weekend away from the kids when we were feeling flush, so we had a look.

There was one particular Chanel bag she liked. It wouldn’t hold much more than a mobile phone and cost £10,000.

Just so there is no confusion, I will spell that out.

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS!

Ten thousand pounds and I’d still have to carry most of her shit in my pockets.

For ten thousand pounds, I could pay a human being to carry her mobile phone on a night out.

We don’t get many nights out so I calculated based on the average hours we get out per month – yes I actually calculated this in front of the Chanel lady – that I could pay someone £30 an hour for five years and still have enough change to buy a bag big enough to actually hold everything she needs.

Like me, the Chanel lady was disgusted.

OK maybe she was disgusted at me rather than with me.

Anyway, Mary didn’t buy the bag, thankfully she had more sense.

She moved on to a YSL concession where she found another bag. It was a similar style and size but this one was a bargain.

At a mere £1750 – less than a fifth of the price of the Chanel bag – this was a deal we couldn’t walk past.

I almost fell for it.

Rolls Royce have sales booths at private jet exhibitions because when you spend a day looking at multi million pound private jets, a £250,000 car becomes an impulse buy.

She just Rolls Royced me.

In the end she didn’t buy the bag but left the store doughy eyed and promised to return before her 40th birthday in a few months. A hint to me perhaps, now that I think about it.

It doesn’t end with shoes or bags either.

Next up was a Rolex store.

Just one second I promised.

I barely had the calculator back in my pocket from the Chanel episode when I caught a glimpse of a Rolex Daytona.

£25,000 read the price tag below it.

Mary mistakenly read it as £2500 and gasped.

I pointed out the extra zero while begging her not to take out her calculator in front of the Rolex man.

Now, I know a watch tells the time whether it costs £25 pounds or £25,000 pounds.

But I really like watches.

Granted, £25,000 exceeds my budget by an order of magnitude and then some, but I can actually see a world in which I would spend that on a watch.

Certainly not the world I live in right now, but maybe my 50th birthday present?

I will live in hope.

I’m not sure if the Chanel lady phoned ahead or if the Rolex guy didn’t quite notice the CK embossed on my white trainers, but either way, he correctly surmised we weren’t Rolex customers, and completely ignored us.

It was time to go home.

Reeling from the obscenity of the Chanel bag, while at the same time wondering which child I could sell to pay for the Rolex, we got into the car..

While I dream of £25,000 watches and splurge on £100 trainers, what I actually like to spend my money on is cars.

But I also have a family.

In a perfect world I’d be driving a Porsche GT3RS but I’d have to put the kids on the roof and that would be ridiculous – imagine they scratched the paint.

The smart choice is a people carrier (or minivan for my American followers) and I ain’t driving no mini van.

I’m a car guy. Unapologetically a car guy.

So when it turned out three kids and their car seats didn’t fit in a normal car, I had to go bigger.

But I’m a car guy remember, so I bought a big jeep.

And I’m a car guy remember so the normal version of this jeep wouldn’t cut the mustard.

I had to buy the four litre twin turbo version which costs the price of a reasonably priced minivan to tax every year and the fuel economy is measured in gallons per mile rather than other way around. It’s awkward to maneuver down narrow streets and just forget about trying to park it in town.

But it’s really fast.

As I threaded the jeep through the ridiculously narrow multi story car park, I had a thought.

What if no one were ever to see these purchases.

The car, the bags, the watches, the shoes.

If I lived in a world where no one knew I owned any of them, would I still buy them?

The only one I am certain of is the car. All day every day I’m buying the car.

The watch took a bit more convincing but I have concluded that I would probably buy the watch too. Maybe not a twenty five grand watch but I would definitely splurge.

And the reason I know this is because I have a humble collection of watches. All bought with a life event in mind. A big birthday, our wedding, earning a degree after going back to school later in life. They all have special meaning.

Except one.

I bought a replica watch on my honeymoon that would have cost £8,000 were it genuine. It was a high quality replica, indistinguishable from the genuine version and cost more than some of my good watches.

It has never graced my wrist. I hate it. I shudder when I see it beside my watches that actually have meaning.

So if the watches were a flex to impress other people, I argue I would have no issue wearing the fake.

I’m even getting embarrassed about the fake as I write this. I am literally going red.

So the watches I’m claiming.

The shoes on the other hand. If I were to be walking the streets alone for the rest of my days, I’d be walking in a pair of trainers that cost £20. Less if I could get away with it.

Does this mean I’m getting rid of the Calvin Klein’s?

Of course not.

I will just colour in the logo before I go back to the Rolex store.