Tisaj - How to Give Up Shopping (or at Least Cut Down)

HOW TO GIVE UP
SHOPPING

(or at least cut down)

HOW TO GIVE UP
SHOPPING

(or at least cut down)

The journey back to conscious spending

NERADINE TISAJ

Published in 2009
by Hardie Grant Books
85 High Street
Prahran, Victoria 3181, Australia
www.hardiegrant.com.au

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright text Neradine Tisaj 2009
Copyright illustrations Danie Pout 2009

A catalogue record for this book is available from the
National Library of Australia.
ISBN: 978 1 74066 735 7

Design and illustrations by Danie Pout
Cover photograph courtesy of Lara Burke at Frankie magazine
Typeset by Megan Ellis
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my sister, Victoria

Contents

My shopping story and why financial
planners didnt understand me

Whats your shopping style? And yes,
shopping for other people still counts

The shopping detox have you
been in your cupboards lately?

The boring stuff build boundaries and
learn to play the shopping game

Sales are not your friend and credit
cards are the devils work

Sorry, but you cant actually shop
your way to inner happiness

Okay, here it is the journey back
to conscious spending

What does not kill us makes us
stronger or so they say

My shopping story and why financial
planners didnt understand me

Every year for as long as I can remember, I have had save money on my list of New Years resolutions. When I was a teenager, I spent all my money on clothes. While my friends had posters of Duran Duran and Michael Jackson on their walls, I had posters of Vogue covers. I plastered my school folders with images of fashion models; I spent my pocket money on French and Italian fashion magazines and made lists of clothes I aspired to buy. I was totally obsessed with fashion and trends it seemed to be the key to a special world I wanted to belong to. My sister, on the other hand, saved all her money and borrowed my clothes. After many volatile fights (the sort that only sisters have), my mother implemented a system: my sister had to pay me to borrow my clothes. She basically rented them. It stopped us fighting for a while, but it didnt change the scoresheet at the end of the day: she still managed to save most of her money and I still had a great wardrobe, but no savings.

More than twenty years later, not much has changed. The intrinsic issue is that I love clothes shopping, and my sister hates it. And so she still has more money than I do.

I am a shopper. I love shopping and Im good at it. But after buying my first home I realised I needed to change my lifestyle. It seems that owning my own home and continuing to add to my fabulous collection of pink shoes wasnt very realistic. And credit card bills and a mortgage are not really great accessories to have in your life when interest rates are unpredictable. So I went to bookshops and picked up everything I could about personal finance. I read it all and still had no answers that applied to me. So I went for the personalised touch: after a series of depressing visits to financial planners, I realised I needed to cut down on my shopping, but no one could actually tell me how. How do you cut out something that makes you happy? What I did understand was that this was not going to be easy; it would take planning, discipline and a change of habits, similar to embracing a new healthy lifestyle.

Read any financial book and it will tell you to spend less and save more. Easier said than done. Its just like the weight loss book that tells you to eat less and exercise more its a simple equation and yet so many of us cant get it right. Every news report these days seems to have something about increasing obesity or consumer debt. We are getting fatter and so are our credit card bills.

Im not a psychologist, a finance expert or a self-help guru. Im just someone who managed to get her shopping habit under control (most of the time). And I understand the mindset of over-shoppers, so open up your Gucci wallet and empty out all those receipts, because in time you will be able to face your inner shopping demons, and make the journey back to conscious spending.

My shopping story

I started behind the pack and never quite caught up. My parents immigrated to Australia and built a great life for my sister and me.

But things went pear-shaped when their business was robbed and put into receivership. Long story short, my family lost everything. Then a film project my sister and I were working on fell through. For a while I felt like we were cursed. We got on with our lives eventually, but my relationship with money became a complicated one. Instead of becoming very careful with money, I became an over-shopper.

Apparently its all about balance

They say you can have it all, just not all at once. I dont really believe in balance. I think that if you are going to achieve something and be truly successful at it whether its bringing up children or having a career you are going to have to make some sacrifices and lose some balance along the way. I dont think this has to be a bad thing; you just need to take time once in a while to reassess your life strategies along the way so that you dont lose perspective.

I worked for a TV network and was on call 24/7. My life revolved around television, so much so that I didnt realise I had become the clichd female workaholic single, renting and spending. And boy, did I spend. Shopping was one of my reliefs, one of the things that I felt made me happy. It didnt require any special equipment or organising phone calls; it was just me, the shopping mall and my credit cards, and I thought it was providing a release from my stressful life. Whenever I had a spare moment I would duck into a store and make a quick purchase. I got so good at it, I could even multi-task it many a TV crisis was dealt with while I was on the phone in a department store changing room.

One weekend I was out with a friend who works as a meditation teacher. We were having a chat about all sorts of things life, love, the pursuit of happiness and she asked me what gave me joy in my life.

My Prada handbag, I replied. That gives me joy.

She looked at me with a sympathy I didnt understand. I didnt realise how out of control my life had become.

I took a couple of weeks off from my crazy job and went to a retreat. There, in the enforced quiet, I realised that TV was not the most important thing in the world and that I needed to get a life outside of it. If I hadnt embraced this idea fully, it was driven home the weekend we launched a reality TV show. The shows stylist had called me at midnight because the hosts Armani pants were missing and we had to work out how to find a new outfit. It was madness, but we managed to solve the crisis at the last minute. In the meantime, my father was in hospital recovering from a stroke. My family had decided not to tell me because I was away working on the launch. They didnt want to bother me.