8 Things I Don’t Buy (a new meme maybe?)

I spend a lot of time on this blog enu­mer­at­ing the things I spend money on.  In fact, that’s its main intent and pur­pose of this blog — a daily account­ing of my expenditures.

I think you can learn a lot about a per­son and a fam­ily sim­ply by look­ing at how they spend their money.

In the same vein, I also think a lot can be learned about a per­son and a fam­ily by look­ing at what they don’t spend money on.  Of course, there’s no way to list every­thing we don’t buy but I thought it would be fun to list some of the nor­mal, every­day things that the aver­age fam­ily buys that our fam­ily doesn’t — or at least not very often.

1. Alco­hol — This is an item you will not find among my pur­chases.  I don’t drink.  At all.  I think that makes me a tee­to­taler.  What­ever.  It’s sim­ply a mat­ter of choice and I don’t sit in judge­ment of those who do drink (socially).  The hus­band does drink, every once in a long while.  Every 3 or 4 years, I’ll buy him a bot­tle of his favorite “hooch”, Wild Turkey, as a birth­day gift or for Valentine’s Day, etc.  And once or twice a year The Hus­band will pick up a 6-pack of designer beer (Sam Adams is a favorite) to serve to his adult kids dur­ing a fam­ily gath­er­ing — a birth­day or Father’s Day, etc.  Other than those few excep­tions, we’re a non-alcoholic family.
2. Tobacco — Like alco­hol, tobacco is a habit I never picked up.  The Hus­band, on the other hand, was a heavy smoker for years and years.  In fact, The Hus­band used one form of tobacco or another for 50 years — when work­ing as a wild­cat­ter in the Texas oil fields as youth, he chewed tobacco because he couldn’t smoke.  Not only was he a long time smoker, he was a heavy smoker.  Two to three packs a day.  In the early days of our mar­riage when The Daugh­ter was a baby and we were really strug­gling to make ends meet, I really resented how expen­sive his habit was.  Not the habit itself, because I under­stand the nature of addic­tion, but the expense.  Then he quit.  Cold turkey.  He had his last cig­a­rette 12 years ago this March on the morn­ing he went into surgery to remove his can­cer­ous prostate gland.  He’s not had a sin­gle cig­a­rette since then — though he does love stand­ing in other people’s clouds of cig­a­rette smoke 
3. Cof­fee — Just as with alco­hol, I don’t drink cof­fee.  In fact, I’ve never, in my entire life, had a cup of cof­fee.  I hate the smell.  When I was preg­nant, the smell of cof­fee would lit­er­ally make me sick.  In my 20’s I drank black tea or Coke for caf­feine.  Now, how­ever, I’m aller­gic to caf­feine.  It gives me migraine headaches.  The Hus­band does drink cof­fee but, pedes­trian that he is, he prefers instant cof­fee.  You’ll never find my man in a Star­bucks, that’s for sure!    If the “Latte Effect” num­bers are to be believed, I believe this par­tic­u­lar non-habit saves me at least $1,200/yr and prob­a­bly $800/yr for The Husband.
4. Fab­ric Soft­ener — I gave up fab­ric soft­ener years ago when I real­ized how bad it was for the envi­ron­ment and how unnec­es­sary it is.  I started by phas­ing it out — using soft­ener every sec­ond or third load.  From there I quickly gave it up alto­gether.  No one in the fam­ily noticed a dif­fer­ence in their cloth­ing so I never looked back.  Part of the key might be that I buy high-quality cot­ton gar­ments which are nat­u­rally soft and pleas­ing to the touch.
5. Make-Up — Every sin­gle female mem­ber of my fam­ily has to “put on their face” before they can leave the house.  I have never under­stood this.  I believe that beauty prod­ucts are a fal­lacy, a sham, and a stu­pid tax imposed by a soci­ety with per­verted ideas of beauty, age, and sex (a word, by the way, that despite everyone’s wishes to the con­trary, is not inter­changable with gen­der).  I cat­e­gor­i­cally reject the con­cept that I have to wear makeup to be con­sid­ered fem­i­nine or attrac­tive.  Besides, I despise the feel­ing of creams, lotions, pow­ders, etc on my face — they make me feel like a cir­cus clown.
6. Jew­elry — Dia­monds are not this girls’ best friend.  I have no need to be “adorned” by The Hus­band or show­ered with jew­els.  Dia­monds might be for for­ever but they can’t com­pete with the “for­ever” gift The Hus­band gave me — the gift of moth­er­hood.  I do have sev­eral pieces of jew­elry that hold spe­cial sen­ti­men­tal value for me.  I wear a $25 gold wed­ding band — no pro­trud­ing rocks to get in the way or worry about — but it reminds me of the lov­ing bond between myself and The Hus­band.  I have a beau­ti­ful strand of Miki­moto pearls handed down from my mother who received them as a gift from her father when she was a teenager.  I have a few pair of nice ear­rings but I haven’t worn ear­rings in a coon’s age.  And I have a beau­ti­ful gold ring my mother gave me when I was a teenager.  The wed­ding band I wear every day and never take off.  The pearls I wear sev­eral times a month — usu­ally to church or to con­certs, plays, etc.
7. Soda Pop, Junk Food, and Sweets — Due to my food aller­gies and sen­si­tiv­i­ties, I don’t imbibe in these foods myself.  But I don’t tech­ni­cally not buy them.  I do buy them, occas­sion­ally, for my family.  I’ve done my best to raise my chil­dren to treat their bod­ies with respect but I decided long ago that I didn’t want to make junk food and sweets a for­bid­den fruit.  In my younger years I liked sweets as much as the next per­son (though salty foods are the foods I did, and still do, crave).  I have noth­ing against sweets but I strongly pre­fer our sweets to have real sugar and other ingre­di­ents rather than arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers and loads of unpro­noun­ca­ble chem­i­cals.  The Daugh­ter, for exam­ple, is 16 and has never eaten a Twinkie.  If you look over my gro­cery expen­di­tures, I think you’ll agree that these prod­ucts are pur­chased in extreme moderation.
8. Elec­tronic Games — We do not own a game con­sole.  We’ve never owned a game con­sole.  I can­not imag­ine that we will ever own a game con­sole.  No Wii, no Game­Boy, no X-Box.  We also have never pur­chased a com­puter game.  The Son has found on-line games he enjoys.  I go through phases of play­ing Spi­der Solitare a lit­tle too much.  The Hus­band enjoys trounc­ing on-line chess oppo­nents and play­ing against the com­puter but that’s the limit of our elec­tronic game usage.

~ o o o O o o o ~

Since start­ing this blog I’ve seen any num­ber of “meme’s” float­ing around the blo­gos­phere but I don’t know how they get started or who starts them.  Not being an expe­ri­enced blog­ger and not hav­ing a very large read­er­ship, I don’t imag­ine I have the power to start a new meme.  But I’d love to read the things other peo­ple, blog­gers and non-bloggers alike, don’t buy.

So, if you’re a blog­ger, con­sider your­self tagged.  Be sure to link back to this post or leave a com­ment so I’ll know you par­tic­i­pated.  If you’re a reader with­out your own blog, please don’t leave with­out shar­ing the 8 (or so) things you don’t buy.  I look for­ward to hear­ing from you.

The rules are simple: 

• List the 8 (or so) things you don’t buy
• Feel free to explain why you choose not to spend money on those items or just pro­vide a list

No related posts.