Subscription Boxes & Frugality
Although January 1st has come and gone, some of us may be examining our goals for the new year. I don’t like to refer to goals for the year as New Years Resolutions,, because these tend not to last. Unless you make a new habit or routine and stick with it for months, you quickly fall back into old patterns.
I’m currently taking a look at my subscriptions - planning boxes, streaming services, games and all the in-betweens. I’m trying to determine if the amount I pay for any of these is worth my enjoyment of them.
In December, I had read Your Money or Your Life (by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez), and The Psychology of Money (by Morgan House). Take the word frugality: in dictionary terms, it means to be economical with resources, such as money. Does this mean we should be cheap, or spend less? In Your Money or Your Life, the authors define frugality as maximum enjoyment from the things you have or use as opposed to the “more is better and it’s never enough” mentality.
In The Psychology of Money, the author states that the greatest predictor of happiness is to be able to control your own life and make your own choices.
Using these two nuggets of wisdom in relation to subscription boxes in today’s (planner) society, I draw the following points:
Does fear of missing out (FOMO) mean that we are making comparisons between what we have and what other people have and figure we’ll be happy if we only had it too?
If we choose to not buy a subscription box (over being forced to cancel because we have no money), will that make us happy?
Can we sit and analyze if a certain subscription box is actually worth it? (Does it help us in our planning and make us happy because planning is our safe space?)
Why does it feel good to buy stuff but when we get it, we lose some of that excitement and we feel this need to get more, or move on to the next best thing.
When we don’t use the subscription box right away, do we feel guilty because now we have “all this stuff”?
do we feel guilty because our planning stuff is taking up a lot of real estate in our homes?
In subscription boxes like Cocoa Daisy, when is it enough? Why is it so hard to make a decision amongst all the choices?
If we had less choice, it would make our decisions easier. Would this make us happier too?
In reality, this has raised more questions than answers. I think the best choice is what works for you, personally, and your family. If planning is something you do for your business or health, maybe buying subscription boxes helps you to maintain your planner or help you to keep interested in it. Maybe it’s part of your self-care, and it’s the one bright spot in your life.
I think there’s a point where enough is enough though. We don’t want to reach past that limit where we just feel bored with everything and it seems like nothing is satisfying anymore. Let’s not overdo it!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week!
Sandra
