Embarrassing Spending Habit?

Wine. I spend a lot on wine. To be fair, I either need to medicate my children or myself (I homeschool, too ;).

Professional sports teams. *head in hands*

I started so small. I bought the t-shirts for my daughter's t-ball team. I named them Mommy's Precious and had that printed on the shirts.

Then I bought a semi-pro softball team. I named them Mommy's Bats.

Within a year I had also sponsored a midget car race team Mommy's Fast.

I now own or sponsor 23 sports teams under my umbrella LLC - Mommy's Fantasies.

I feel ya sister!

I spend a lot of money in thrift stores, and at times I worry that the spending is out of hand. When I start to feel that way I take a vacation from thrift store shopping until I actually need something. I do try to buy only the things I need, but when things are so inexpensive it is really easy to buy more than I need. For instance, I see a t-shirt my son would like, and I buy it because it's only $1 or $2, even though his t-shirt drawer is so full I can barely close it. I do feel I save more than I spend by shopping the thrift stores, but I still buy more than I need, if that makes sense.

We buy so much from Amazon our UPS guy came to our family party. :)

Instead of looking at where you spend you should be tracking what you are spending it on. You don't budget X dollars on Amazon, you budget X dollars on books, food, gas..... If you happen to get the vast majority of these items on Amazon it is irrelevant.

Every Christmas we spend about 3,000 on gifts for everyone, this includes spouses, kids, family, that poor bus driver that smiles at my son every morning even though I know she is thinking five minutes! if you just got up five minutes earlier I wouldn't be watching you run to the bus barefoot! Yes, she earns her gift!!

I digress

Five years ago these purchases were spread across multiple stores, four years ago I got Prime, now 90% of these purchases are on Amazon. That doesn't mean I have an Amazon problem, it means I am getting my money's worth on the convenience of having everything at my door without having to deal with humans and their inability to navigate a parking lot while visions of sugar plumbs dance in the head!

In other words same items on the budget, gas is less, don't need therapy anymore. :)

Per the what happened: go on to your Amazon account, orders, then on top you can type in key words, like food, or departments like home and garden, then it is only displaying orders by budget group. You know the total so that will pull out major budget groups, the rest goes in misc.

Not sure why 3,000 is shocking, I have a very large family. I think most people would be shocked how much they actually spend on Christmas. I track all year, not just the last minute rush. Plus other than my kids we don't do birthdays so they are getting double for Christmas. Point is it may sound like a lot but when it comes down to per person it isn't much at all.

The year I looked at my spending and saw that I spent around $1000.00 on yarn was an eye opener. Yes I knit a lot and make things for my family (grandchildren in particular) but I also had to see that I had a huge amount of yarn in storage bins all around the house. Ugh. I did a quick check and figured that there had to be at least $5000 in yarn in storage bins. So for the last several years I've been knitting from my storage unless there's something someone requests in a color or yarn weight I don't have. It's always interesting to take a look at your budget and see where your money is actually going vs were you think it's going.

Our make everyone else queasy item is...food.

Most people would just die if they saw how much we spend on food a month/year.

We only buy grass fed beef, organic chickens & eggs, pastured pork, wild caught fish. In produce I usually only buy the "dirty dozen" in organic form. But we eat a lot of those. Then a lot of the products we use aren't sold in the regular grocery store...really good oils for cooking and specialty items that are non-GMO.

My husband and I refuse to have our kids be guinea pigs for the genetically modified food companies...so we do spend a ton on non-GMO items/organics.

We eat really really well, and we don't spend more than we can afford. (We did our annual budget last night).

That is our embarrassing yearly expense. Sometimes our grocery bill makes me feel queasy, but it is important to us.

Our is dining out. Sometimes we vow to do better, but then we get tired and the kids are starving and we don't have any food that will cook up quickly in the house, and out we go...(sigh)

Hi - my name is A. and I am an Amazon addict too!

:)

I have Amazon Prime and have purchased so many household, grocery and homeschooling items from Amazon that they should have given me my Kindle for free. They make it so stinking easy to buy stuff. I can totally relate to your question. In fact I am scared to go tally up my 2013 figures.

One thing I have noticed in the past year is that Amazon prices are not as competitive as they used to be. And they are starting sales tax on certain things. So I am learning to ALWAYS check other sources for better prices.

I am also training myself to always check the library FIRST for a book that I might want.

I did buy a beautiful HP laptop computer from Amazon for $89 this past year - it had been returned and was considered "used" but it was basically brand new. I came across it because I watch the Amazon Warehouse for deals.

Sigh - glad I'm not alone in this.

PS: I do very little brick and mortar shopping - not a Target addict though I see how it happens to people. Their stores have this effect that does something to your brain. :P

I reconcile the bank and credit card accounts daily online. It is just a habit I have because we own our company and run a ton of expenses through it and make sure it is paid in full each month. It's crazy when you start analyzing where all the money goes!

I ran my QuickBooks report for medical expenses and including our premiums, we were shocked that we spent over $30,000 in medical/dental this year. It doesn't seem like that but it was true.

My hair habit is about $150 every 8-10 weeks. I keep my hair all 1 length (think Pocahontas.... I look like my Native American heritage) but I do play with color and I model for my stylist when she is training on new things. In October I spent $300 on Klix special extensions for her to get certified. I still have them in now and they are pretty but not my favorite experiment I've done. It was worth a try though because her starting price for a non model is $1000 and I would NEVER pay the $1,000 for this... WAY too much upkeep for me.

We spend a small fortune on wine. Our new favorite is Decoy Cabernet and we bought 2 cases in November when we caught it at a discount of $20/bottle. It is normally $30/bottle.

This week is one of the biggest weeks of the year for us.. There is Christmas, daughter's birthday and our anniversary. So we spend quite a bit on daughter. We bought a condo for her in July and she loves living on her own just 20 minutes from us. I am so proud because that condo is always spotless. When she was growing up, you could hardly walk through her room.

This year we spent over $5,000 in vet bills. The poodle's new bionic eye due to genetic cataract was $4,000 alone. I am still taking care of him with daily eye drops. The 2 month post op is next week! We also spent over $1,000 on our 14 yr old Cocker in June and he was like a new dog and so happy. Unfortunately, we lost him in early Dec because there was nothing we could do for his sudden paralysis.

We do stay on top of every penny we spend and it does add up very quickly.

Since you homeschool, are any of your expenses covered with special tax exemptions? Maybe you can get a break on those costs.

You got advice on thrift store shopping because not everybody has money to throw around. Most of us have no idea what it's like to just order anything your heart desires off of Amazon. That includes books and what you consider essentials. We don't have a pocket to put that in. You obviously save tons of your money and and still have money to burn.
What's that like?

No, I don't have an embarrassing amt of money I spend on anything. Except my kid's college educations and that's because colleges are overpriced and under serving people. They and the government have no clue about the value of money..hmmm.

Amazon prime really messed me up. I used to not buy stuff because of the shipping costs. Now that shipping is free with my Prime membership, it is too easy to click BUY.

oh my, when i was still homeschooling, i was bad with books too! it's never been amazon for me (although if i'd been more computer savvy and amazon had been as easy then as it is now, i would have been) but i racked it up at used book stores and library sales. and a lot of it was outdated curriculum items we never used. if it was even peripherally related to something we were studying, or in which they had expressed even a mild interest, i had to have it.
it made for a lot of heavy trips BACK to used book stores and donation centers after the boys went to college!
the only thing about which i'm extravagant any more is food. now that it's just the ol' man and i, and we're getting older, i like to make sure we eat fresh, and largely organic. my poor boys grew up in the broke and busy years when it was hamburg helper<G>.
:) khairete
S.

Amazon is wonderful! How did we ever get along without it?

And I agree with J. S.

J.,

You are the saver - right? How can you NOT know what you are spending every month? Do you NOT have a budget in place for these things?

The books you aren't using anymore? I would either donate or sell them on Amazon.com to try and recoup some of the money.

My luxury? Getting a manicure/pedicure every two weeks.

My husband used to collect vintage Matchbox Cars. My dad made him a display case for them. Once that was filled - he stopped - thank God!! :)

Have you tried going to the library? Why do you have to purchase the books? You were posting about needing a bigger house, do you have the room to store all of these things?

Have you tried going to Goodwill or a thrift shop to see if they have what you are looking for? What about one of the Home Schooling stores? Take the books you are no longer using there and consign them with the store....

Glad you can afford to spend like that....

I've had weaknesses over the years. Toys and books of course, when the kids were little. Not junk, not at all, but I enjoyed tricking out their toy kitchen, playhouse and sandbox, adding to my son's lego collection and their dress up box. Not all these purchases were new, I shopped consignment and I LOVED the thrift store (especially for for dress up stuff) but money spent is money spent and it all adds up!
These days my biggest weakness is eating out. I cook, I'm a good cook and I love to cook, but I also love the luxury of sitting down to enjoy a good meal prepared by a professional. I'm not talking Dennys or the Spaghetti Factory, I'm talking about really cool and unique eateries, different kinds of food (Thai, vegan, seafood, etc.) that I may not normally cook at home. Living within minutes of Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco this is foodie heaven and I could eat out several times a week if my budget allowed! And it's not just the food, it's the whole experience, the different neighborhoods, the people, the ambiance and the cute hipster waiters and bartenders, it's all so good :-)

ETA per your SWH: Unless you sell your used books, sounds like maybe you could make a donation to the library when your kiddies grow out of them. Perhaps you could make a list of the books you want and ask the library if they would consider purchasing them. They have a budget and maybe they'd be interested in knowing what their patrons are interested in...!

Original:
Yeah, I spent a lot of money on my kids in the early years. The Right Start catalogue people loved me, LOL!

One thing you might consider is that you will have to get rid of these books at some point. The library is a wonderful resource and you could start using it more than buying books that just fill up your home. I really do understand, though. I had thousands of books for many years. I'm down to a couple of hundred now, and they are the big books for adults. Hard to get rid of those...

As far as what I spend? At this point in my life, I only buy what I really want and need, and I buy nice things, not junk. I get my hair colored and cut and have a keratin treatment done twice a year. Yeah, my hair costs money but I'm NOT going to go "grey" until I'm 70. I get my nails done because they break easily, and because my nails aren't as pretty as they used to be when I was younger. I also treat myself to massage therapy because it helps my muscles. But I'm older than you and I consider it part of coping with the 50's - LOL!

My mother is older and grew up during the depression. She can pinch a penny till it screams. She passed her thriftiness on to her kids. When I was single, I had a very good job and would shop for business clothes, but I usually bought them at off-price stores like TJ Maxx and Marshalls. Now that I work part time and have a child, I've become addicted to thrift stores. I can't tell you how many nice designer items I found for $1-$2 dollars! They also have a very good selection of books. When my dd was in preschool and kindergarten, I bought her lots of workbooks that were totally new at thrift stores.
I also re-sell everthing I don't need I Craigslist. I'm guessing that I probably break even on everything I buy...a number of things I actually sell for a profit since I buy them so cheap at thrift stores...give it a try!

It's not me, I am a saver...my husband spends money on whatever sport he is interested in at the time. He must have the best.

In the late 90's he was playing paintball. He had to have the best marker and the best balls. With that came the bags, the wall hangers to hang the markers, and the fees. A constant cash flow out the door.

In 97 we got married and I took him skiing. He had never skied before. He stunk, but he discovered he could ski with these short ski's. I already had boots and ski's, but wanted to try snowboarding. Before I even had a lesson, I had my own board and boots. Anyone who ski's knows, you have to have the suit, gloves, beanies, socks, silks, goggles, and whatever I missed. Then we had to travel with the ski's so we had to have the ski bags and the boot bags.

Early 2000's he purchased a paintball field...it was a flop. Once he was over it, he nearly gave everything away.

Early 2000's it was a motorcycle, which graduated to the harley. He changed the windshield, the rims, the fairing, the stereo, paint, seat, and so on. Another cash flow out the door.

In 05 our baby was born. Again, everything was a must have. Mom thinks this is money well spent, but not everything was necessary.

In 2010 our daughter began to ice skate and so did Dad. Here we go again.
She figure skates and plays 2 hockey positions. Three pairs of skates for her per year and a pair for him. I try to narrow it down to one position, but his personality says she is doing good, so why stop. That includes skates, dresses, competitions, coaches, sticks, pucks, shin pads, gloves, shorts, jersey's, helmets, and whatever else...

During summer camp our daughter plays tennis. She enjoys it and asks her dad to take her to the courts to play. Another old sport of dad's. One day, he shows up with a $300 tennis racket. Where did this come from???! I see $100 rackets, but how did this turn out to be a $300 racket (double entendre). They are both too busy, so the racket was used once. Apparently the one time he used it, it was great match.

He is a wonderful man, but this is all far from how I was raised, so it is all very shocking to me.

Amazon is listed the most on our CC statement! LOL
We buy the typical movies, books and music. But we also buy our coffee, sunglasses, we bought our vacuum through Amazon. We buy clothes, stuff for the house. We bought our fire/CO2 alarms from Amazon and will most likely be buying a replacement fan for the bathroom soon from them. There are all sorts of things we buy that we actually need to save ourselves going to the physical store to get them or because the physical store doesn't have the selection and item we're looking for.
I just look at it and roll my eyes. I'm sure there is a way to figure out just what is groceries and household items and what was just fun but I gave up some time ago.

Well, I'm scared to see the credit card bill when it comes for this month! This is the first year in a while that we had some extra cash so I didn't keep as close an eye on my spending as I usually do. Add in a big vet bill and a big car repair - ouch!

But I agree with J. S too - don't look at it as Amazon shopping but just shopping. Now that we have Amazon Prime igo on there all the time to pick up something that I wouldn't normally find on a trip to Target or Shoprite, or that I keep forgetting to pick up when I am there (watch batteries and colored pencils are two of my recent purchases not counting Christmas gifts).

Honestly with how little I spend on myself, my embarrassing shopping bill would have to be Target each month. I buy SO much stuff there it is just a little cringe-inducing when I see it pop up so often on my bill!

I can relate. A few years back I bought a lot of loose jewelry stones and the FedEx guy would do the same thing.

I now have a bad habit of buying fabric and a lot of it is from online shopping as Walmart is not the place to buy the good stuff.

So you are not alone.

the other S.

PS I read the post to my husband and he laughed and reminded me of what I had done!

I can't drink cheap liquor. I just can't. Likewise for my husband, but his vice is good beer.

I'm planning to move to another state sometime between now and July 5. I'm a planner with a capital P. So, I've already started pre packing and trimming down things.

I'm so surprised at the amount of new clothes that I have that still have tags on them. It's ridiculous. I think I over shopped to fill time.

We all have such habits (over shopping or over eating), but again some mamas would rather bash you than face that honesty.

We love Target and spend a fair amount there. We can cover all our bases in one wander - household items, cleaning, kids' clothes/shoes/toys, diapers, healthcare/beauty. My other weakness is the used bookstore. Sigh. I love real books. I try to trade a book for a book but it doesn't always happen.

In regards to thrift store shopping I don't. It takes too much time which as working parents my husband and I don't have much of. We want our off time to be with our family doing fun things. Digging through thrift stores is not on our radar. We work to live and play; we budget accordingly. Most of us find our savings hotspots and that's that. To each their own...we all have weaknesses. Some of us can admit them more freely while others like the view from their high horses.

Christmas time. I am pretty awesome at saving year round then BAM! Christmas time comes.

babysitters--at $25/hr for 4 kids we spent thousands in 2013--almost all of it for convenience or date nights

and dining out--I'm on a first name basis with the Thursday night drive thru girl at The Patio and the Sunday morning drive thru guy at Buona Beef.

It's funny, mine is more of a number. Anything over $100 makes me queasy.
Below that, I just tend to consider "life", regardless of what it is.
Not sure how I arrived at $100...but that's where it is in my head!
I don't have many of those that fall in that bucket, either. Maybe shoes.

Well, if these are things you'd have bought anyway the only thing your are out is the shipping...correct? So it just shows you how much you're spending on those things over all.

It's like ordering food storage. If I spend $3000 on food for long term storage, which we eat on a regular basis, then don't spend that money at Walmart I haven't lost anything but probably saved since I got a bulk deal.

Just a note regarding the library -- if your local library is part of a larger city or county library system (and in the Chicago area, I bet it is), you can probably get any book in the entire system sent to your local branch for you to pick up. So you're not limited just to what's in your local branch but have access to every branch, without driving there. I know, they won't have the 70s-80s math books you want for keeps, etc. but you might be able to get a lot more kinds of readers for the kids and other resources if you are searching in the whole library system and not just the local branch. Sorry if you already do this; I've just been surprised how often, here in our huge county with a really large library system, folks don't realize that they can get any book from any branch (and some are far away) sent right to their local branch for pickup, and there's a great online catalog that's extensive. Just something to consider --again, if you do this already, never mind!

Comic books. I budget for a certain amount a week and it doesn't seem like much, but now that I'm pregnant and the weather hasn't been great I seem to go about once a month. When they pull a months worth of comics out of my pull box and ring them up, I realize just how much I'm spending. :)

I don't like to go shopping, so I do as much as possible online--groceries, household stuff, drugstore stuff. Of course, I buy shoes and clothes online. I don't think that I do any of it in excess, but I use amazon.com for just about everything. I just added a few minutes ago some stuff to my Subscribe & Save list. No shame here, though.

Let me tell you where I can go and lose track of time and easily spend way too much money--the bookstore.

I USED to spend about 75 to 80 on my hair every 6 weeks........ now, I spend 12 and I have gotten more compliments on my hairstyle than I ever did when I spent more.. so remember, paying more doesn't mean you are getting more.. so to answer your question, in looking back to less than two year ago, I paid way too much for hair....... also on buying gifts for so many different people. I love to give, but I was a HUGE over-giver.... oddly enough, I have the cheapskates in my life to thank for me no longer spending so much... it was finally due to their being so cheap ALL the time that I thought, is it that they are cheap or do I just spend too much?? it was a bit of both....
Now, my two luxuries: I still have my hair done but for 12 dollars :) and a pedicure when needed.. that cost 16... some of the time, I just do it myself..

It would probably stun me to see how much we spend on smokes. I don't even want to THINK about how much money we waste! And we are struggling to pay bills. Damn tobacco. Maybe I should quit this year.....

From what I know about people who shop regularly thru amazon is that they get great deals, save time and also save a ton of money by not buying impulse items at Target, Walmart, Stop &Shop, etc. All the new moms I know buy all their diapers, baby food and misc. baby stuff through Amazon. What a time saver!

Our big expense that is always a surpise to us is restaurants and take out dinners. Pizza, Mexican, Chinese & Sushi - we spend waaaay too much on it all but love it. If there was a good Thai restaurant in my town Thai take-out would be on the list too!
We spent many, many years rubbing nickels together for warmth and eating meatloaf or mac & cheese with hot dogs for dinner when the kids were little, I worked less hours and my husband was a rookie. While we're not rich, and we put away alot into savings (retirement & college) and have all the appropiate insurance (life, disability, medical, etc) the 58% of our pay that actually comes home after all those insurance & savings deductions does get spent - and too much of it goes to cuisine that I don't know how to cook. Maybe I should spend something on a gym membership so I can work off all those yummy calories!

Amazon is my weakness also. I buy nothing without checking them out first, plus I have prime so the 2 day free shipping always draws me in.

However, it;s not for unnecessary things. I'm pretty cheap that way, so I'd never think of it in a 'bad' way.

This years biggest expense (out side of everyday bills) was Christmas. I have 8 kids, plus in laws, 2 kids boyfriends, 1 son's girlfriend, and a few family friends and families. It add's up, no matter cheap or good of a shopper I am.

Our luxury is programs for the kids on days off school and in the summer, to keep them active and busy.

I think Amazon is too easy, maybe. Best to disconnect and GO to the store. You'd be amazed at what you save! We get a delivery a day most days.

Starting the new year, nope. Know why?I cancelled my card. I think this was smart. I have to go to the store now!

I love Amazon (also a prime member). However the reason why my spending with Amazon is so high is because I've started to order food, household items, in addition to the occasional gift or pair of shoes. The prices are usually better than competitors and well, because it arrives in two days, I spend less time in traffic and waiting in line in stores and more time with my family an save on gas - win/win in my book =)

I hope you have an Amazon Visa in order to get the cash back. ☺️

I spend a lot on everything I spend money on...theatre tickets, dinners out, mosaic/glass supplies, kids clothing, vacations. You are not alone!!!

I have to admit that I am addicted to shopping at Home Goods. I'm sure I spent thousands in this past year on everything from dishes, to vases, decorator items, gifts, candles you name it. I love the store. I am actually going to go ack through my checkbook register to calculate how much I spent in the store in the last year. I go to the store once a week. I'm also sure I spend a lot on food too. I just signed up last night for Amazon Prime and can't wait to order something....anything. I love shopping for anything!!!!

Saturdays: tongue burrito or tongue tacos for my husband, barbecoa tacos (4-always four) for me and he whines all the time because we pay an extra dollar fifty for lettuce and cheese on mine. (he smokes about a pack of cigarettes a day-no complaints from him about that).
Pleez we love the food and I don't want to make tongue at home EUGGHeeuueuuuuuuuuu