My Personal Finance Confession

This post is in response to the personal finance confession project started by Are You Going To Be This Way The Rest Of The Time I Know You (long name).  I ran across it over on Mrs Micah’s blog earlier today and thought it might be fun to share.  Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?  Here goes:

My Personal Finance Confession

I don’t comparison shop.  Ever.  I am not a very frugal person in general.  Rather, my saving schedule is to create an artificial scarcity.  I transfer a certain percentage of my income into various IRA, money market, and brokerage accounts every month and spend freely with what’s left.  So long as my credit card is paid off every month, it means I’ve met my savings quota and I don’t worry about it.  this works very well for me most of the time, but it tends to backfire when I make large purchases that span multiple months.

I bought my current car new in 2004 (I know I know, but I was just out of college and didn’t know what I know now).  My car-buying process was basically do some cursory research on various automotive sites such as Edmunds and Autotrader to get an idea of how much I should pay.  I then went to the nearest Toyota dealer, told them what I wanted and what I was willing to pay, and bought it on the spot.  I realize I probably could have gotten a better price by playing a few dealerships against each other, but I suppose I’m just too lazy for that.  I usually can’t bring myself to do much comparison shopping for big-ticket items I don’t care much about, like a car.  Once I get to an acceptable price, I usually pull the trigger even if I know I’m leaving a little money on the table.  Of course, if it’s for a big-ticket item I enjoy, like a guitar, I will spend endless hours obsessing over ever tiny detail, but most consumer products just don’t interest me all that much.  I guess it’s a good thing I don’t buy many of them.

It’s embarassing.