Aside from a select few pieces of furniture, my most expensive belongings are my shoes.
As much as I hate to be a cliché, I love shopping for shoes and see them as integral to my personal style. I’m willing to spend a couple hundred dollars on a single pair if I absolutely love them (not all the time, of course, maybe once a year). I also appreciate that my shoe size really isn’t going to change—well…I hope—so I very well could have the same shoes for life. I wear all of my shoes out, and then take them to the cobbler to be repaired.
I don’t mind spending on clothes, either, though my individual pieces of clothing tend not to cost anywhere near as much as my shoes. This is one budget item that Lindsey and I agree on; we both appreciate fashion, and feel it’s worth investing in quality pieces. I don’t have a budget per se, but it’s definitely an area I feel I overspend compared to many of the women featured in Home Economics (and, TBH, compared to many of the women who share their personal finances anywhere on the internet). Household spending on women’s apparel averaged $655 annually in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I definitely spend more than that. (For men, the average is $406 annually.)
All of this said, I also have a tendency to impulse shop and then regret my clothing purchases. Over the years, and especially over the past seven months, I’ve really tried to be more conscious of what I’m buying and its place in my wardrobe. Being in the personal finance space for so long, I feel extremely guilty when I buy clothing because many consider it superfluous and nonessential, and I’ll go months without purchasing anything new.
Sometimes, though, that gets me into trouble. I’ll have a big event coming up, but I’ll put off buying something to wear because I don’t want to spend the money. Then I’ll go out the day before and buy something I don’t really love—often full price, because I have no other choice—and it feels even worse than if I had been more decisive earlier and shopped smarter.
I tried a clothing rental service once and really didn’t like it. It’s still pretty expensive, and if you don’t know your size in every brand and style (which I do not), it’s kind of a bust. And anyway, I’d rather own something if I’m spending money on it!
So, how much do you spend on clothing? Do you have a set budget, or does it fluctuate? Any tips or tricks for keeping your spending down?
