Spend your money, time, & energy on purpose.

This is the story of a sumptuous, milk-colored couch and my bank account.

I found the couch late one night while scrolling through Pinterest. The angles and arms spoke to me. Those mid-century modern legs!

And I made the mistake of visiting the website and actually clicking on the product description.

Soon my social media feeds were filled with ads for this beautiful couch. It haunted me on Facebook and chased me around Instagram. The couch peeked around corners and wooed me with expiring discount codes.

Friends, here is the reality of my current life:

• 1 small black dog
• 1 large black cat (long-haired)
• 1 husband who bike commutes to work
• 2 stepsons who enjoy sitting, reading, watching tv, and bickering on the sofa
• 1 self who occasionally enjoys eating pizza rolls on the sofa while watching 90s music videos

Could you imagine a scenario more poorly suited to a white sofa? You probably couldn’t dream up, from scratch, a family or home that is more likely to ruin light-colored furniture.

And yet! I almost spent $$$$ on a white couch that is hilariously unsuited to our lives.

When I lay it out like this, with bullet points and what not, my almost-purchase seems obviously unwise. But how often do we do this?

We buy the cocktail attire even though we never go to cocktail parties.

We sign leases on three-bedroom apartments so we can host “out-of-town guests” when we don’t even have out-of-town friends and hosting stresses us out.

We buy an Instapot or Vitamix even though we don’t like cooking. (And none of the other kitchen gadgets we’ve purchased have changed that.)

If you’ve ever bought something to fit your fantasy life, you are not alone. People do that ish ALL THE TIME.

But if you can notice what you’re doing and stop, you’ll probably save yourself hundreds of dollars and piles of regret when you look at that Instapot you never use.

4 questions that will help you shop for your real life, not your fantasy life

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