When I was a lot younger, and a lot shoppier, the byword was that "need" should never enter into the shopper's vocabulary. So I bought a lot of stuff I didn't need. I'd stop at Crate & Barrel after work and buy a cute little pitcher that I really had no use for. But, hey, it was only fifteen bucks. So what if, when I had parked my car and was heading home I whacked the C&B bag on the side of a brick Emerson College building just down the street and destroyed the cute little pitcher. It was only fifteen bucks.
I bought plenty of clothing that I didn't need, even back when I went into the office five days a week, back in the day when you had to look at least quasi-professional. Non-need-based shopping is how I ended up with three periwinkle-blue cashmere sweaters, two nearly identical teal silk blouses.
I'd spend Saturdays shopping with my sisters and friends, hunting for bargains at Loehmann's, at Frugal Fanny's, at Filene's Basement, and at the outlet stores that were starting to pop up in places like Kittery, Maine.
But while I wasn't exactly shopping at K-Mart or the Dollar Store, my tastes were pretty pedestrian middle-class. Crate & Barrel. Lord & Taylor. Talbot's. Funky, artsy stores with funky, artsy tops and earrings. I had a few higher-end pieces from upscale brands or shops, but they were items I got at Loehmann's or Filene's Basement. That cool sweater from Barney's - does Barney's even exist anymore? - I got it for not much in Filene's Basement. I had a pair of kick-ass black leather Ferragamo boots I got for pennies on the dollar at Saks because size 10 AAAA boots weren't exactly flying off the shelf Sometimes I'd do a birthday splurge on a $$$ sweater from Peruvian Connection.
I will say that, in my shopping days, I enjoyed shopping, especially when it was part of a social excursion.
Now, meh. And it's pretty much the same for my shopping companions of yore. (We old.)
And, of course, I don't need anything - those cute Crate & Barrel on-sale dessert plates don't wear out. And I'm someone who hangs on to clothing for a good long time. I've had one of those $$$ sweaters from Peruvian Connection for 35 years. (Birthday present from me to me on my 40th birthday.)
Most of what I buy these days is replacement: undies, socks, sneakers, tee-shirts.
But even in my shopping prime I was never drawn to luxury goods. And never in a million years would I buy a clothing item or kitchen tchotchke that was going to put me in debt. Sure, I'd charge things, but when the bill came, I paid it. (I say this now, but I there were plenty of times when I didn't fully pay off a credit card bill the month it was received. I was just too cautious and frugal and paranoid to rack up much debt.)
The idea of acquiring a heavy consumer debt load for anything other than a car loan or a mortgage (or an MBA) was anathema to me. Unless it's a big ticket, once in a very blue moon item, if you can't afford to pay for something without going into serious debt, how could you enjoy it?
And, fortunately, I never wanted high end designer items to begin with. Birkin Bag? Way cute! But $12K for a pocketbook, when I was just as happy with a Dooney & Bourke I scored at TJ Maxx.
And, of course, I'm not young and scrolling through Insta and Tik-Tok seeing all the cool and expensive stuff, the It Girls, the influencers are urging us to buy. And feeling aggrieved and jelly that I can't afford it. (And I'm not young and saddled with college debt and wondering whether I'll ever be able to buy a home, let alone worrying about the existential yuck that the youngs these days endure.)
Anyway, I was interested to read a recent NY Times article about a young woman who - gulp! - found herself $50K in debt for buying high-end duds through Buy Now, Pay Later apps. These apps - Klarna is the best known - let you put down a small amount up front, and then pay it off in installments.
Elysia Berman's first B.N.P.L. purchase was for a used orange snakeskin Proenza Schouler PS1bag. This is a brand and item I've never heard of, but the one she saw was $1K retail, but only $430 on The RealReal (a site where people sell used designer clothing and accessories). In Berman's defense, she was young. She'd grown up a relatively poor kid in an ultra-affluent town, she'd gone to college with a lot of big buck classmates, and she was working in the fashion industry where most of her colleagues were rich girls who had multiple pricey bags. (Probably had Birkin bags, too.)
“I felt like that bitch in that bag,” Berman remembers. After so many years “seeing everyone around you have a nicer life than you,” she was overjoyed to get a taste for herself. Taking home such a treasure for only a small cost upfront felt like stumbling upon a cheat code — “a kind of unlock.” (Source: NY Times)
For Berman, this first purchase was a gateway drug. Among other items, she bought a pair of R13 boots - another brand I've never heard of - for $2,000. Her "wake up call" was paying $700 for a Khaite (what? another brand I don't know?) jacket that was sharply discounted. She had to have it. But her normie credit cards were (not surprisingly) maxed out, as were several of her B.N.P.L. apps. But she just had to have the jacket. (Believe me, I get it. When I was 25, I spent $150 on an on-sale blue suede jacket at Ann Taylor. This was, in fact, my rent money, and for the next couple of weeks I lived on a loaf of white bread, a jar of Peter Pan, and a bag of oranges. I completely adored that jacket. So I get it.)The juggling she had to do to make the Khaite jacket purchase got Berman to start looking more closely at what she was doing to herself, and found that she was that big old $50K in debt. (She is now in her mid-thirties and has worked her debt fully down. She no longer uses B.N.P.L. apps.)
Part of the seduction of B.N.P.L. is that your purchases are "interest free." (The vendor pays them a percentage of each sale.) But they're only "interest free" up to a point that can be easily passed. B.N.P.L. shoppers can end up paying 36 percent interest. Yowza!
Maybe a better name for those apps would be Buy Now, Regret Later.
Sometimes I'm really and truly glad that I'm not young anymore. (And not that it would fit me, but I wish I still had that blue suede jacket.)
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