Seven Things I Don't Really Need: Part 2

Yesterday, I recapped Dave Ramsey's "Buyer Beware" lesson from Financial Peace University, which was all about how to guard ourselves from clever advertisers who try to entice us into buying tons of products we don't really need. (Click here to read about it if you're awesome.)

I gave you Dave's list of seven common things people buy that they don't really need, and I promised to give you mine. So, without further ado, here are the seven things that Jacob Grant finds difficult to resist.

1. Eating out. It's not just the food I like, but the experience of going to a restaurant, being served, and not having to do the dishes. I love being given a menu and examining all the various foods to eat, whereas if I stay home and open my fridge, my options are a little less varied. Dani and I have decided not to spend a lot of money on restaurants right now and instead pour every dollar we can into paying off our mortgage. The sacrifice has been... unpalatable.


2. Movies. I'm a movie nut. I love watching movies. I love collecting movies. When it comes to buying my favorite flicks on blu-ray I prefer to get my hands on whatever multi-disc, specially-packaged, extended director's cut with tons of special features that I can. I've had to significantly cut down the number of movies I purchase, which means I'm much more careful about which ones I buy.


3. Coffee. I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I do enjoy specialty lattes and those warm, minty drinks that Dunkin' Donuts serves up at Christmas time. I splurge every now and then, but not as often as I'd like.


4. A super-powered cell phone. I think, today, cell phones do for a person's prestige that luxury cars did twenty years ago. Before the cell phone, a car was one of the best ways to identify someone's status in society, but today I think the cell phone has taken over. Nowadays people walk around with their cell phones out, texting or browsing the web, just to show off. I had a smart phone once. I loved it! It was a cool little device, but all the bells and whistles that it provided just weren't worth what it was doing to my wallet. And I didn't need a phone threatening to augment my ego.


5. Jackets. My wife has come to believe that jackets are to guys what shoes are to women. I didn't realize this until I got married and starting asking my guy friends about their inclinations toward jackets and the general consensus was, yeah, guys dig jackets—like, a lot. It's silly, but whenever I see a cool jacket I get this little surge of impulse spending within me.


6. Batman stuff. As much as I dig movie stuff, I dig Batman stuff even more. For the past 10 years or so I've been working on a collection of 1:6 scale action figures. I have several Batmen and a large section of his rogues gallery, but there's so much more! Every now and then I scout out some prices and add a figure to the wish list, but it's been a while since I've actually purchased one.


7. Junk food. Ooh-ho! There's nothing I like more than buying a package of Oreo cookies along with a new blu-ray and throwing myself down on the couch for some good ol' movie-watching-Oreo-dunkin'-R&R. Junk food is not only bad for my wallet, but bad for my physical well-being, but still, even that double-edged sword of logic doesn't keep me from indulging every now and then.

So, now that I've aired my dirty laundry, what's yours? What products do you easily succumb to purchasing?

Keep pinchin' :-)