What Would You Hide From Your Spouse to Save Money?
August 4, 2007
Does your spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend spend more money than you’d like? Do they spend money on things you don’t agree with? I met some people the other day that have a sneaky tip for you.
Gadget Buster
Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent. I was out to lunch the other day with Sue and Bob, when Sue mentioned her husband is a gadget freak. They get tons of mail from places like Best Buy, Circuit City, Gateway, and Crutchfield that she just throws away. She hates him spending money on electronics so she screens his mail to get rid of all the advertisements. Sometimes she even gets rid of his copy of Wired Magazine or PCWorld so he won’t read about new gadgets. I told her it was pretty sneaky and could imagine her husband would be ticked off if he found out.
Pottery Barn Not Welcome Here
Then Bob chimes in and says he does the same thing all time to his wife. She is bombarded with catalogs for stores like Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware and always gets sales party invites for scrapbooking, Mary Kay, jewelry, or Longaberger baskets. They all go in the trash he says and she is never the wiser. “We don’t need any of that stuff and can’t afford to spend money on all that overpriced junk”, he says.
What Would You Hide?
I do agree that advertisers try everything they can to create a selling opportunity and it does get old fishing the real mail out of all the junk mail. But it is pretty sneaky to trash someone else’s mail without them knowing about it, even if it is junk mail.
What to you think? How far would you go to save money? What would you do if you found out your significant other was throwing away your mail?
All posts by Ben Edwards
Summer Bonus check.
So I guess no one else does this, or at least if they do, they don’t want to admit it 🙂 It sounds like we agree junk mail is nice to avoid because it can make us spend more but throwing away someone else’s junk mail is verboten!
I don’t do this to keep my boyfriend from spending, but do it to keep myself from spending! I throw away those pottery barn catalogs immediately.
My one weakness is the JCrew catalog; it always makes me want more overpriced clothes I don’t need but I love to look at it when it comes every month (that’s right, they know their customer base and send one out every month like a magazine). My solution is to flip through it immediately when it comes and then throw it away.
I don’t hide anything from my fiancee but I can relate. Everytime I’m on a sales call, she would buy something new for the house.
I’m okay with the tossing of junk mail, catalogs and such – though it would be nice to agree that this is a good way of helping the family’s finances. But leave the magazines alone!
Isn’t it also sort of illegal to go through other people’s post? Regardless, if they’d be justifiably annoyed if they found out, then you plain shouldn’t do it.