5 Things I Bought I Believed Would Make Me Feel Better About Myself

Spoiler alert: none of them did (and I get into embarrassing details about why).

As much as I’d like to say I’m above buying utter crap, I’m not.

It’s taken me quite a long time to admit any of these publicly, and in many ways it’s still pretty embarrassing. But (and it’s a huge but), looking back at these sorts of purchases gives me glimpses into what I was feeling and where my headspace was at that point in time.

A recurring pattern emerges almost every time: I felt bad about myself or I wanted to please others. Sometimes I felt ugly (I thought I was above hating wrinkles). Other times I didn’t feel like I was cool enough to be around others (aka I amassed an entire vinyl record collection so I could talk to someone about it).

While I can’t say these are my top five biggest purchase blunders that I thought would make me feel better about myself, they’re at least the most memorable.

1. A designer black blazer that cost way too much

I love blazers. In fact, there are several in my closet right now. I recently found a double breasted linen number that I am obsessed with and want the weather to cool down just a smidge like right now.  

But there was one I bought when I was in my early twenties I regret, the black one, as it shall henceforth be known. Although it looked, dare I say, fabulous on me, I bought it for the sole reason to impress others. Other work colleagues specifically.

You see, I used to look quite young for my age and I wanted to be taken seriously. Many times I would step foot in the classroom where I was a teacher-in-training and could easily blend into a group of high school students.

I decided that dressing the part was a great idea to help me stand out as an authoritative figure. And dressing the part apparently meant wearing a blazer that cost me way too much money.

I remember walking into the school thinking I was hot stuff and everybody would automatically take me seriously. How I could go back and tell my past self how naive I was. 

One of the teachers tried to get me in line with a bunch of other high school students and I tried telling them I was one of them. It took me showing my badge to be able to walk away from that crowd.

The blazer is still somewhere in my closet in my mom’s house — where I haven’t lived in over 15 years. 

2. A New Zealand jade pendant necklace

I met a charismatic jade stone carver when I was traveling throughout New Zealand and was enamored with the jewelry on display at an artists’ fair. The necklace I ended up buying looked like a teardrop with lines weaving in and out from top to bottom. Instead of hanging from a chain, it had a thin black rope-like string. I wore it as soon as I paid the artist.

The piece was absolutely gorgeous, and I appreciated the craftsmanship that went into it. These thoughts, however, were overshadowed by what others would think about the pendant. 

“You must be doing pretty well for yourself if you can afford to spend that much on it!”

“How cool that you went to New Zealand! Tell me allll about it!”

“You have such exquisite taste, Sarah. I need you to come design my entire home, I trust your judgment that much!”

Well whaddya know, when I went back home and wore it around friends and family, nobody cared. Not a single person. When I finally told someone where my necklace was from, all I got was this person telling me “Huh, I thought it was some random piece of costume jewelry.”

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3. A refurbished laptop

I had the best of intentions of investing in a nice laptop for my work as a freelance writer. I had set a budget that’s higher than I’d typically spend and did a ton of research. Eventually I settled on a business laptop with all the bells and whistles — basically it would load programs a lot faster.

I was cheap and decided on getting a refurbished one to save some money. I was known as a money savvy person after all, why would I waste my money on a new laptop? Sacrilege! 

Right after the initial warranty on it ended, the monitor decided to play tricks on me. It would be fine one day, and start flashing the next. Instead of taking it somewhere to get it fixed, I held onto the hope that the problem would somehow resolve itself. 

The laptop finally won when I was helping a client out one day through Zoom and the monitor went completely black. I ran downstairs and grabbed my husband’s laptop, got back on. Thankfully the client was none the wiser, though I had to ask a few clarifying questions (you know, because I was too busy freaking out a few minutes ago). 

Because I didn’t want to be proven wrong about my choices (and feel bad that somehow this meant that all my financial decisions up until this point were bad), I hung onto that laptop for dear life. 

I paid for a fancy laptop warranty plan — they come to your house to fix any computer related ailments.

Said warranty plan didn’t kick in until 30 days later, so I bought a cheaper laptop in the interim, until that got fixed.

The laptop got fixed, but it only lasted another month until something else went wrong.

I got another technician to come again, only for this said fancy warranty plan to cover the replacement of a super basic laptop part. My laptop no longer ran as fast as it did, which meant I couldn’t use an important piece of software I used to run my freelance business.

In the end, I got another laptop that cost even more than my first one. No, it wasn’t refurbished. 

4. Tickets for a concert I never had any intention of attending

I’ll spare you the agony of wondering why I bought this ticket: I didn’t want to disappoint my friend. And I really wanted to go, but it coincided with a family vacation. I could have said no to the ticket, but I didn’t.

Here’s how the scenario played out: my friend and I are huge friends of the same British indie bands. We gush over said band members (Something about tall men with shaggy haircuts and army green clothing gets me every time). We’ve been to concerts before so the idea of us buying tickets for one another isn’t new.

One day, my friend comes in a tizzy letting me know they bought tickets to a band we’ve been waiting what felt like forever to roll into town. I couldn’t disappoint them. So I paid them for my part of the ticket, knowing I wouldn’t be able to attend.

Said friend ended up being upset with me anyway (we’re fine now), and I was out $150. 

5. Pez dispensers 

Source

On the surface, Pez dispensers are these cute little plastic statuettes you can fill with candy shaped perfectly inside the rectangular body. For me, it became an identity in and of itself.

Nobody else in my high school knew what they were, and I was convinced it was my ticket to being the cool kid. If I was known as “Pezgirl,” I’d have something interesting to say, and by extension, be interesting.

To be fair, I liked Pez dispensers. I loved reading about them and collecting them. In my teenage insecurities, I thought having something “cool” would be the only way to get others to notice me. Hundreds of Pez dispensers and a decade later, I no longer wanted them to define me. So I either sold or donated them to the local foster care nonprofit.

Sifting through my son’s room one day, I found a Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser I thought I had gotten rid of. Starting at it, I felt sad for my younger self and why she felt she had to surround herself with objects to feel like she mattered.

I was about to get rid of it when my son, ever the curious boy, asked what it was for. We went to buy candy and I showed him how to put it in and dispense it. He found out his favorite flavor was grape. 

He asked to buy another one and I said he could as long as he really wanted to. He said he did, and used the money my mother gave him for his birthday. 

As soon as we got home, he ripped open the package and ran into his room to play with it. Soon, there were pictures he drew with Pez dispensers in them. He used them like action figures on weekends (apparently the Republic of Pez won the war against the toys). 

They say that kids teach you so much in life, and observing how he has interacted with these two Pez dispensers taught me that it’s ok to buy things. There are ways to enjoy what we’ve purchased purely for pleasure, and have that be enough.