Picture this: It’s a glorious late-spring day. Cinco de Mayo, to be precise. Mother’s Day is only three days away. You stroll confidently into your local Trader Joe’s, because wine. As you occasionally do, you decide to pick up some flowers for your wonderful wife.
Except, this time you’re thinking “You know, self, I’m doing alright. Instead of buying the normal $3.99 flower bouquet, how about we splurge a little bit and get the next level up? $6.99 isn’t a great leap, after all.” But your rational self chimes in:
Rational Self: Wait a second, self! You just wrote a post last year on August 9th about keeping lifestyle inflation under wraps! Don’t be a hypocritical piece of shit and write some advice for your son and do completely the opposite!
Real-World Self: “Man, you’re right. But, I mean, it’s a three dollar difference.”
Rational Self: I mean, you’re probably right. It’s only three dollars.
Real-World Self: “Phew. And also, we just had this Portuguese red wine blend the other day from Trader Joe’s. I only bought three bottles the other day because it was just a first-time trial. I think, since I’m already here, I’ll buy more. Let me just pick up two cases.
Rational Self: Oh, shit! Did you realize it’s $6.99 per bottle? You leveled up from the $3.99 flower bouquet and now you think you should do that with the wine, too?
Real-World Self: What if I also buy a whole bunch of Mbali, since it’s finally in stock again, for $4.99 a bottle? That way, each bottle of the Portuguese red and the Mbali will average out to just $5.99 per bottle. Does that work?
Rational Self: That sounds surprisingly rational. Buy all the wine.
Maybe Just This Once…
And that pretty much sums up my Trader Joe’s trip from last week. Have I let lifestyle inflation creep into my life? To some extent, sure. It’s not exactly the difference between a Corolla and a Benz, though, I would argue.
First, flowers and wine are just one-time costs. There is no higher cost of operations and maintenance, insurance, and personal property taxes associated with them that eat away at my wealth over time. Also, I haven’t actually switched to these products—they just happen to be the ones I bought during this shopping trip.
And that’s mostly because…
It was right before Mother’s Day.
I’ll go back to buying our normal go-tos soon enough, but for Mother’s Day I figured we could enjoy a little splurge to celebrate Little Man’s mom. It was my own way of doing a little something extra to show my wife that I appreciate her. Happy Mother’s Day to the moms out there that I love so much!
Hey big spender….Wait, that’s a song title. But it still applies to your flagrant hoity-toity expenditures. Start thinking about you son, and how he’ll have to forgo one of his three Masters degrees.