Impulse...

I have a problem, it’s not a big problem and many might see it as a positive, but it’s beginning to worry me a little as I don’t quite know what to do about it. My problem isn’t easy to explain, but I’ll do my best. My problem (or at least one of them) is impulsiveness, or rather the lack of it.

Some of my friends seem to be able to buy the things that they want simply because they want them rather than need them. Some buy new cars when the car they already have is perfectly good. With others its clothes or watches or holidays or technology, and they buy these things not because they need them, but simply because they want them. Sometimes they even buy these things when they can’t really afford them, relying on luck, good fortune, or even loans to allow them to make whatever it is they just ‘have to have’ affordable.

How I envy them.

If I ever decide that I must have something I usually spend so much time debating why I don’t really need it that I lose interest and don’t buy it. I debate these things so well that I always end up arguing myself into a corner and deciding that not only will I not buy it but I never wanted it in the first place.

How I wish I was an impulse buyer.

My idea of an impulse buy is to purchase a new shirt in the sale because I like it and know that, although I have other shirts, I will wear it until it falls to threads. Even so, I end up feeling guilty for buying ‘yet another shirt’ for days afterwards when in reality I don’t own that many; although my wife might not agree.

No, extravagant I am not. I only buy stuff with money I already have and that I really - and justifiably - want or need. I have no credit cards, no debts, and I’m sure that because of this my credit rating will be extremely poor, which I am told should worry me but doesn’t.

Of course there are days when I want to wear a Rolex or drive an Alfa Romeo Spyder, days I’d love to trundle off in my Volkswagen campervan or take off in my speedboat. Days when I think I’d really like to have these things, although I did have a speedboat for a while until I realised I didn’t really need it. These are difficult days spend debating with myself, trying to justify why I need these things - whatever they may be.

And then, when I don’t  allow myself to buy them, both winning and losing the argument simultaneously, I feel guilty for not buying what I didn’t really need or want even though I wanted them for a while.

Yes, there really is something wrong with me.