Thanks for all the great feedback on my last post. I especially liked the comment from David, who said
I’ve found that the problem with comparing ourselves to others is that you’re usually comparing your strength to their weakness or vice versa. Either way, it’s not fair.
Exactly! That is so true, and a good reminder for the times when we start to compare ourselves – either favorably or unfavorably – with other people. Focusing on how we can make ourselves better people compared with who we were a year or a month or a day ago is probably a much more effective way to make positive changes.
I made a big step in my purging process today. Physically it was only one box, but mentally it was a big step in terms of letting go of things that are no longer useful, regardless of how much they cost or how much we once liked them.
About seven years ago, back in the very early days of our business, my husband and I purchased a multi-media business card package. It was supposed to be an interactive DVD that we could send to our clients, and it was packaged in a fancy case with our pictures and lots of info about our business. It took several months to complete the process of making them, as they were custom made for our business. Sometime during the process, the company that made them ran into serious financial problems, and nearly declared bankruptcy before our order was finished. To make a long story short (and boy was it ever a long story at the time, complete with lots of tears on my part), the “interactive DVD” part of the package turned into a generic DVD about our industry rather than one specific to our business. Although we were disappointed with that change, we were generally pleased with the finished product, and sent lots of them to clients and prospective clients for the first few years after we got them.
We had signed up for a payment plan to finance the project, and it took quite a while to pay them off. Our business wasn’t making much money back then, and we were making the minimum payments each month for a long time. Eventually we were able to pay more than the minimum due, and I think we paid them off sometime in 2004 or early 2005… Funny how I can’t even remember now, given that I was so stressed out about it at the time (a lot of the stress came from not knowing if we would even get the finished product, even though we were on the hook with the financing company to pay for them either way). Whatever happened, that money is long gone and forgotten – the proverbial water under the bridge.
Our business has become much more successful over the years. And it has also morphed into something that we do entirely on-line and over the phone. We never have to drive anywhere or send anything to clients by snail mail. We’ve basically made our office paperless; I can’t even remember the last time we bought paper or envelopes or anything like that. Times have changed, and we’ve changed with them.
And that brings us back to the multi-media business cards. We still had a box full of them sitting in our basement. It’s probably been two or three years since we sent any out to clients, and the last box had just been hanging out in the crawl space of our old house and the basement of our new house. Were we ever going to go back to sending them out? No. We have much more efficient ways of communicating with clients now, and our marketing strategy is much more targeted and streamlined that it was in 2003. So what was I going to do with the box that was taking up space in our basement?
I checked to see if the cases were recyclable… they were not. I checked to see if our information could be taken out of them so that they could possibly be used by someone else (I was thinking of putting them on Craigs List for free if I could get our info out of them). But that wasn’t possible, as our marketing material was permanently encased in the plastic.
So I threw them away.
It felt great. The box actually sat on the kitchen counter top for about 24 hours before I got up the nerve to toss them. I pondered all the money we had spent on them. But then I thought about all the ones we had sent out to clients back in those early years, and all the good feedback we got. The money hadn’t been wasted. We had ordered the minimum number of cards possible, but we just didn’t need all of them. We weren’t going to start going backwards in our marketing strategy just because we had leftover multi-media business cards. And I was tired of seeing that box every time I went down to the basement.
Now the empty box is sitting in the garage waiting to be filled with stuff to donate to the thrift store, and my life feels just a little bit lighter. Just because something cost a lot of money doesn’t mean we should hang onto it forever. Once it’s no longer useful, it doesn’t matter what we spent to buy it, or how useful it was in the past. We live in the present, and we might as well make sure that the things we surround ourselves with are helping to make that present as good as it can be.
The other take-away lesson here: don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff. I wish I could go back in time and see the me who was crying over those business cards. I’d tell her that she really doesn’t need to worry, and that seven years down the road she won’t remember how much they cost, when they arrived, or how long it took to pay them off. Focusing and working hard to pay off debt or solve whatever problem is facing you is definitely worthwhile. But stressing and freaking out about it are not – they don’t solve the problem any faster, and they take away from time we can be feeling happy instead. Now I just have to focus on applying that lesson to my current life. I’m much better about not stressing about things than I used to be, but it’s still a work in progress.
Jaime B says
Absolutely! I think it’s understandable to feel stressed or emotional under adversity, completely reasonable. I’m a firm believer in giving your emotions their due so you can release them, ultimately making it easier to deal with a problem. However, if it goes on too long then it can make everything that much more difficult.
It’s also worth taking the time to figure out for yourself what is worth freaking out about and what is not. Similar to deciding on wants/needs in a budget. Emotions are not so easy to corral but just having thought about it helps me be more conscious of whether my emotional state is helping or hurting me.
Penniless Parenting says
I think I should be taking your advice. We bought a bunch of wedding invitations and never ended up mailing most. We also bought a bunch of thank you cards. I haven’t touched either of those in 4 years. Should I keep them? Probably not. The thank you cards at least have some use. They’re just cards with our names and monogram on them. But those wedding invitations? What can I possibly do with them? They’re just space hogs… but yet, I spent so much money on them.
I really identify with this post.
Will I work up the nerve to toss them? Hrmmm… Only time will tell, I guess.
Amanda S says
Wow, I bet you didn’t think you’d bring someone nearly to tears with this post, but you did. I feel that sometimes we come across just the right things at just the right moment. I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now but have never felt compelled to post until this very minute. I am seriously stressed about some financial and non-financial clutter and concerns in my life and when I read your last paragraph it nearly brought me to tears. Instead of stressing and agonizing about decisions when I go home tonight, I’m going to think about the me – seven years from now – who doesn’t even remember this little bump in the road. Thank you!
FrugalBabe says
Jamie – I agree, although I used to do way too much stressing out about things. Life is better all around with a more mellow perspective.
Penniless Parenting – that just made me think of the stack of photo Christmas cards I have from 2006. We ordered too many copies that year, and didn’t send all of them out. I have about 15 cards sitting in a drawer in my craft area. I can’t think of anything that I will ever do with them, and yet for some reason I have been hanging onto them. Hmmm…
Amanda – Thank you so much for your comment. I wish you all the best with your bump in the road, and I hope that putting yourself in a position to look back on it will make it seem a little less bumpy.
Penniless Parenting says
Photo Christmas cards. Wow. Yea, we all do things like that. I just have a hard time throwing out wedding invitations. They were with expensive stock paper. Maybe there’s an upcycling project I can do with them? Any ideas?
David @The Frugality Game says
Great story! And thanks for quoting my comment. :)
In economics, they call it a “sunk cost” – basically money that’s already spent is no longer a consideration (that cost is sunk). And yet, we all have such a hard time applying that idea. It’s like there’s some kind of disconnect between what we know (money under the bridge) and what we feel (but it cost so much!).
Way to go tackling such a big mental hurdle, and congratulations. I’m sure anyone else (myself included) would have struggled, too.
Tiffany says
This is the number one reason I hold on to things that are no longer useful or relevant to my life….the money I spent to acquire the thing. Sometimes I think I hold onto these things to punish myself…to have as a physical reminder of wasted money…weird, right?
Beth D. says
A great example of the “sunk-cost fallacy”. Just because at one time you spent a lot on something, doesn’t mean you have to keep it forever. I have a hard time getting rid of clothes or shoes that cost a lot for that reason. I no longer want them, but “I spent so much on them”!
J.D. at GRS had a post about this and people didn’t seem to understand the point, but your post is a great example!
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/09/08/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-good-money-after-bad/
Courtney Carver says
Letting go of stuff feels so good. I have been slowly working through the inside of the house, but this weekend, my husband and I are heading to garage and shed! There are boxes we never opened since moving into our home almost five years ago!
I can’t wait to say hello & goodbye to all the stuff I thought I would need forever. Now that I know I have enough, it will be a piece of cake!
Congrats on letting go!
Cortney says
Here’s is a link for making recycled paper out of old paper, per the wedding invite conundrum-
http://zerowastehome.blogspot.com/2010/06/paper-making.html
Karen says
Great post. I too am looking to let go right now. My current project is selling most of my books to pay down my credit card debt. I am weirdly OK with it somehow.
Molly On Money says
After my first wedding we had boxes of these bright pink napkins that had the date we got married, a romantic quote and our names. These napkins did not get used up during the reception dinner. My Mom kept them and for the next 5yrs she used them (almost daily) and well into my second marriage. The napkins turned into instant dinner conversation (it was really fun when my ex-husband showed up for a family dinner!).
Your blog just spurred that memory, probably to escape/hide the truth that I too have very similar boxes lurking in my sheds (yes, I mean more than one shed) filled with useless promotional material from dufunct businesses I once had.
McPolish says
I agree, I worry less about a lot of things these days than I used to, but it still is – and always will be! – a work in progress.
Congrats on the one box – it may only be one box physically, but clearly it was taking up a lot of mental space!
Leah says
what a great reminder! I have trouble with this even when I didn’t spend money on something — I’ve moved a few things around more times than I care to admit. I keep intending to work on decluttering, and then I backslide — my boyfriend and I live in a small one bedroom, so I rationalize by saying that we don’t even have all that much. But still . . . getting rid of things we don’t use really helps free up some of that mental energy :-)