– Marina Budd, staff
We’ve all done it, gone to a store and wanted something so bad that we just can’t leave the store without it. That is until you saw the price tag.
Celebrities on the other hand, never have this problem. If they want something that badly, they’ll purchase it without taking a receipt. Take Beyoncé Knowles for example.
In 2007, Knowles was tired of her black leggings and decided to purchase $100,000 gold leggings to show off during her performance at the BET Music Awards. Or Lady Gaga, who spent $50,000 on a machine that allegedly detects ghosts because she is afraid of the paranormal.
And of course, the weirdest purchase goes to Amanda Seyfried. The “Dear John” star fell in love with a dead horse and brought it home for her pet dog, Finn to play with. With her fascination with taxidermy art, she had her horse stuffed and is now the best friend of Finn. Seyfried did not mention how much the dead horse cost her.
However, celebrities are not the only people who spend money on things they don’t need.
Aydin Uzunoz, a first-year music student at Mohawk claims that it didn’t take him long to spend most of his OSAP money on the latest technology for a video game.
“I bought a PS3 so I can play Skyrim,” says Uzunoz. “I plan on purchasing a 40 inch flat screen TV as soon as the Boxing Day sales start.”
He also noted that he did not have a lot of money left over and was forced to budget his money until he gets paid the following month. Uzunoz keeps track of his expenses by creating a budget every month. Due to his unnecessary purchase, Uzunoz needed to cut back on his spending by not eating out as much and staying away from stores such as Best Buy and Future Shop.
Students at college or university dream of having nice things and becoming wealthy. It’d be nice to not have to worry about going into debt after buying that hot new car you’ve always dreamed about. But of course, what’s the fun in that? We all want the latest fads as soon as they come out in stores.
Latasha VanEvery, a student at Laurier Brantford studying Criminology, says her love of fashion and winter coats is where her money goes.
“I will buy maybe two or three different coats to wear,” she says. “I’ll wear them for a year and then I’ll buy a new one the next year. I have to keep up with the style.”
Every year new trends come out and we all have to have the latest fashions or technology, even if that means we need to stretch our budget. Then some of us might find a way to scam our parents into giving us a little extra money so we can buy the newest fad.
Maybe that’s what Suri Cruise did when Katie Holmes purchased her daughter an $850 purse for her 5th birthday this past April. Not to mention the cute little gold heels to go with it. Even at five years old, Suri is keeping up with the latest trends and she’s learning early about the value of “saving” money.
According to Jacqueline Kacen and Julie Ann Lee, authors of the article “The Influence of Culture on Consumer Impulsive Buying Behavior”, up to 80 per cent of all purchases are impulsive. Kacen and Lee conducted a study in 1997 and found that one store made a profit of $4.2 billion annually on impulse sales of candy and magazines. They noted that technologies, such as the Internet, increased one’s unnecessary purchases. Kacen and Lee say that buyers get pleasure from the unneeded buy. They concluded that a positive mood equals impulsive purchases.
Bas Verplanken and Ayana Sato report in their article “The Psychology of Impulse Buying: An Integrative Self-Regulation Approach” that impulsive buying comes from an individual’s behaviour.
“Impulsive individuals typically learn from rewards and much less from punishments,” Verplanken and Sato claim. “This may be the reason that impulsive buyers may find it difficult to quit their habit.”
But fashion isn’t the only area in which students spend their money.
First year Criminology Student at Laurier Brantford, Suyog Pradhan, confesses his bad habit, “I have a habit of eating out every day, although, I always have food at home.”
Pradhan confesses that while he is aware that this is a bad habit, he enjoys eating out more than cooking for himself. A busy student schedule often leaves little time for cooking or preparing food, so many students reach for fast food when they’re in a pinch.
Temptation always gets the best out of most of us. We see something, we want it, we look at the price tag and contemplate on whether this is a good idea or not. After such a long time of giving into wants, it’s easy to see why some people have a hard time saying no to useless trinkets.
Author of the book “Peace of Mind”, Remez Sasson describes the meaning of willpower and how it affects people’s daily lives. In his book he claims that people who are weak to willpower tend to feel lazy and those who achieve self-discipline will feel fulfilled. He also explains that once you gain willpower individuals can feel in control of their own lives.
Mark Tyrrell, therapist and writer of his article “Do You Have No Willpower”, metaphorically explains that gaining willpower is like building muscles in your body.
He says, like muscles, we can tire out our willpower and that might cause us to give into temptation.
For students, budgeting can be hard. We indulge in things that we don’t necessarily need, like a PS3 or three different coats each year. We just want those things because it makes us happy, even though we may regret spending that much.
We all love to spend our well earned pay check, but money doesn’t fall out of the sky. If it did, maybe we would enjoy the simpler things in life rather than the material. It’s just another thing we can dream about while we’re buying the hottest video game or that 30th pair of shoes.
