When I shop alone, I look for sales. I don’t splurge. I buy healthy food, comfortable clothes at reasonable prices, things I can use on a daily basis. For example, the purse I use for day-to-day is old, ratty, and cost less than ten bucks at Target…six years ago. I have one pair of sandals, one pair of sneakers, one pair of black “going out” shoes, and one pair of brown mocs that I pretty much wear all fall and winter. When I buy for the kids, I get things that can mix and match, are on sale, and will last them through the season (or get handed down to the next kid). So, you get an idea of my shopping style.
I love, love, love shopping with my husband because he makes me live a little. He ignores price tags, makes me go into stores I’d normally pass up because the prices are higher, and has a better eye for style than I do. At the grocery store, he tosses what looks good to him into the cart without looking at how much it costs or what the ingredients are. He literally forces me to splurge, and I only put up a token resistence. It’s so much fun. Luckily for our kids’ future college educations, we don’t go shopping together often. All of the nicer things I have were gifts from him, like my leather boots, my “good” handbag, my favorite outfits for wearing out to dinner. Once he got me this beautiful leather wallet (and it has a designer name but hell if I can think of it now), that I normally carry around in my cheap Target purse, haha! When he buys things for the kids, he’ll go into each store and pick up whatever he things looks best. He has no concept of kid-friendly colors (a WHITE Ralph Lauren shirt for a 4 year old? Are you kidding me?), sales, normal prices on kids’ clothing, etc. However, the kids look darn good in the things he picks out. I try to be the voice of reason, and sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I think shopping with him would be less fun if it happened more often, but since we only get out shopping alone together once or twice a year at most, I get to fully enjoy it and then go back to being my frugal, practical self.