Reformed shopaholic? please can you give me the benefit of your advice

eatandspendaholic

Anglea wrote: »

Hi girls,

eatandspendaholic - did you spend your £40? Hope you enjoyed your healthy lunch.
Everyone else seems to have been very good.

I've overdone my walking this week and have blisters it was mainly through doing shop comparisons between Mother's Day presents and going into every charity shop, every day. Still haven't bought what I need so will have to go out again tomorrow. Because I can never seem to get anything to fit (clothes) that I need, I end up 'having' to buy something else - this this it was a crafts book and when I got it home realised it was one I had before and gave away!

Morocha I'm up for a challenge. I think mine ought to be to write a list of things I NEED TO BUY and get them instead of buying rubbish all the time.

Hiya, no i did not spend my £40 that day. When i got the the speedbank, I had forgot my card :rotfl:Talk about meant to be. And luch was healthy, mams good like that, helps best she can. Brings me bits and pieces she has spotted in the supermarket.

Thankyou :A

CompletelyLost

morocha - I wish I had someone to give me constructive criticism on what I buy. I always feel like my mum sugar-coats everything, if you see what I mean. I was honest, brutal advice, but I think she worries she'll offend me

NGlady wrote: »

Bigwardrobe zar

Right then ladies - advise please! Thinking I loved my new jacket, I ripped the tags off earlier and walked to the shop only wearing for about 20 minutes, so the sort of time some would wear to try on. However I have decided the colour doesn't really do anything for me, saw my sister on the way to the shop and she gave me a polite "it looks nice" when asked, but i don't think it suits me
Considering it cost £20 - would U girlies be cheeky, take back to the shop and say oh i thought it'd fit took tags off and realized it doesnt, only tried on for a few minutes (taking tags with me) or would you just take the loss :S argh lol.

I hate it when that happens I wouldn't have the guts to take it back with the tags taken off, I'd probably try to sell it. But as the others have said, it's definitely worth a try.

NGlady wrote: »

Completelylost.

I can see that - it happens to me too. I look great in the item in the shop... then, I put it in its bag and "fantasise" about wearing it, what i'll wear it with and even in my head a 3 stone lighter figure wearing it lol. But then I put it on, and look through my own mirror and im like well thats terrible! So much so I regular don't try things on, resulting in wrong sizes or buying two sizes and rtning one.

I love that spred sheet idea - I need to find a way to download excel now, that sounds really efficient, and I bet its quite a motivation if your trying to save up for something etc?

Yes when I was saving up for my hol money last year, I had a different bank account which I transfered bits of wages etc too. I was thinking about it last night, at one point I was 19 earning 350 a week due to commision and i didnt save a penny looking back I should have saved the 150 commision each week over the space of the year I had that for. But hey in hindsight huh :S

Angela, Being in the butchers doesn't really bother me. But, when im eating and the meat is slightly pink or a off colour or whatever, I always get very worried. Always although I abso adore indian food, very concerned about chicken in sauces that I cant see the meat itself.

Its good to find something your a bit obsessive about and want to collect the money for such as your Clinique stuff helps instead of buying the bits and bobs to put the money into something worth while

Lifes a long lesson . . .

Happy mothers day to all

I use OpenOffice for my spreadsheets - it's free to download. But yeah, it does help - it is a bit scary though, especially looking through it and seeing how much my expenditure has increased over the past few months :eek:

============

Tomorrow = lots of returns, posting things and hopefully not spending.

I'm also toying with the idea of joining the gym (might have mentioned this before). I don't know why but I feel intimidated by all the super-fit professional business-type people who go to our local. I really seriously need to lose weight as I have terrible body image at the moment. I think that's one of the reason I keep buying so much stuff. At least it will be £25 well spent (that's if I can force myself to go every other day).

NGlady

CL - I bet its quite shocking when you look back at the end of the month, and you have a figure of X amount for things like Magazines etc and you don't actually remember much about them. Im awful with them, I flick through them but very rare I actually sit and read from back to front, I think its an habbit to buy them. Books are so much cheaper if you buy at the right time! Or you have x amount for clothes filled in, and you look through and you cant really remember what you brought!

Anglea

Hi all

Completelylost - OMG, if I saw a photo of myself wearing anything, I'd never leave the house :mad: yet if I look in the mirror it doesn't look that bad LOL

verynewmoneysaver - that's a brilliant website - thanks!

CompletelyLost

I'm so obsessive that I actually write down the item name, price, shop I bought it from, date I bought it, whether I used vouchers, etc etc for example, this month's clothes come to £142.09... but that will be muchhhhhh less by tomorrow (returning spree)

Anglea - I know, I am exactly the same! I've got into an awful habit of photographing every single outfit. I don't know whether it's a good thing (makes me return things that I thought were really lovely) or a really really stupid thing to do, but I can't help doing it now. Though I don't like the fact that I can see myself from all different (mostly unflattering) angles - that really is scary

Edit - oh and about books/mags... I have to say I'm not much of a reader (I think I lost all enthusiasm when I started and English Lit degree and was forced to read sooooo much) but I do like nonfiction self-help type books. I mostly pay for them out of vouchers from surveys, though. As for magazines - our local Lidl always has a pile of last week's OK/Hello magazines for the taking, you just have to go early to get them, so I don't really buy magazines unless they have a good freebie. My nana also gets loads of 'take a break' and 'chat' magazines given to her, so I often read those too.

I do have a lot of DVDs though.

Souk08

I do love a magazine but got 3! subscriptions on the go. 2 were gifts and one was a £1 thingy from the freebies board. Yippee!!

Viewed a flat today but it was not good. Very shabby and untidy and my friend knows how tidy I am and didn't warn me...which makes me wonder if she thinks that's okay and is therefore very messy herself IYSWIM. Can't really be doing with sharing and would rather live alone then I can tidy and clean as much as I like!

ZarZar1990

Luckily (or unluckily) for me, my Mother is a huuuge shopaholic (but refuses to admit her problem, she is in credit card debt, but whatever, she won't listen to me) and she has taken things back many a time, you legally can still take things back with the tags off, I think it has to be within 28 days or something, but having the tags and receipts handy definitely helps I think.

Good lord, I'm losing the will with this room sort out, phew!

CompletelyLost

I thought that legally shops don't have to take things back because you've changed your mind..? Only if it's faulty. But anyway, I know most of them do though (thank God!)

NGlady

Yes thankfully they do accept returns, really puts me off shops when they don't accept them back faith sale puts me off as they dont give refunds on sale items.

supersmith

Hi guys,
Some interesting thoughts above, it's strange starting to think about why I do shopping so it's good to hear other's experiences.
N Glady - another vote for try and take it back - you don't want to be stuck with something you don't like much when you could save the money or spend it on something amazing.

I had a bad weekend after my good intentions. I went out for a meal with work on friday night, my fault I didn't check but I thought they were paying for our meal as it was a celebration meal, well guess what it got to bill paying and the person who invited us all said that's £40 each guys! :eek: Well I almost fell off my chair, coughed up and then spent the rest of the night wondering how it could have possibly been that much as my food was not very expensive, I did have a couple of glasses of wine but didn't go overboard. I think some other people may have ordered expensive food, I hate it when that happens. I didn't feel able to say, oh let's put in what we had rather than split it. Grr. :mad: So then I did my typical, well I've spent money it doesn't matter now and went out and bought more drinks. Then saturday I was unsurprisingly hungover, so to make myself feel better I went for breakfast then went into town for a wander. I was doing really well as I like browsing sometimes, it satisfies my urge to look at pretty things. But then I saw a bag, it was so beautiful and unusual, I couldn't put it down, it was one of those love at first sight, and so I bought it. It was £30 :eek: which is a lot for a bag. But I absolutely love it, and I would rather have something I love than lots of things that are just OK.

Usually I'd feel really bad about spending the money and to make myself feel better I'd probably wander into town again. So, in order to make up for this lapse I will set myself a challenge for the rest of March. I will not buy anything else unnessesary (ie clothes, accessories) for the next 2 weeks - not long but we'll start small eh? I have a wedding to go to this weekend and so I will need to find something to wear from my own wardrobe and resist the tempation to go into town. It seems that the most danger is being in town as then I will see things, if I stay away I won't see things I want.

So full of good intentions now, we shall see how it goes! I like my idea of having a small challenge to start, then bigger challenges to follow!