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Spending The Frugal Handbook

TFH #28: What Did You Buy?

November has drawn to a close, and with it, major sale campaigns like 11.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

Given that Christmas is right around the corner, I think it’s safe to say that most people’s bank accounts are either hurting more than usual right now or will be hurting soon.

With this in mind, my question to you is simple: what did you buy?

Things that you’ve been eyeing for a long time and finally snapped up a good deal?

Things that you use in your daily life and decided to stock up on because of attractive discounts?

Or perhaps things that you intend to gift to loved ones in light of the upcoming festive season?

Personally, I bought a mixture of all these things.

I bought a couple of things that I’ve been thinking about replacing my worn-out ones with because I came across good deals for them.

I also picked up a board game that I’ve wanted to buy for a few months now.

I’ve been unwilling to pull the trigger all this time, but a number of things lined up during this sale season that finally pushed me over the edge:

  1. Lowest price I’ve ever observed since adding the item to my cart,
  2. Upsized cashback campaign for store vouchers on ShopBack, and
  3. I needed to hit the minimum spending requirement to get free international shipping for another item that I was already going to buy as a gift.

With all these put together, I was convinced that the time was right to make the purchase, and now I can’t wait for it to arrive.

Of course, as I alluded to earlier, I also bought some gifts ahead of Christmas.

But I’m proud to say that the bulk of the damage I incurred from this shopping season comes from things that I use every day, and I would’ve bought them sooner or later anyway.

Buying them during this sale period allowed me to reduce the unit cost of such items because of all the vouchers and promotions that were available.

So even though my expenses for November are higher than average, it doesn’t bother me too much because I know that it’s money well spent.

Everything I bought was either things that I’d eventually buy, things that I wanted to buy and found good deals for, or gifts for others.

I don’t think it’s a big deal that I spent more than normal this past month, but of course, it’s not like I went off the rails and had a shopping spree.

If you’re feeling like you may have gone overboard with your shopping during this period, it might be helpful to reflect on what are the things you bought and ask yourself if they were good purchases or not.

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