Strange Accounting

If I load the Starbucks app with 30 dollars, I have spent money on Starbucks. But when I scan my barcode in the Starbucks app the next day when buying a coffee, I have not spent a single dollar. In the second scenario, the coffee is free, paid for, so I might as well stop in today and order one. And then another one tomorrow. That works for the three to five trips to Starbucks after that, until I have to load up the app with funds again.

If Brooke buys something at Target, and takes it back, she gets a refund. If during the same trip to Target, after obtaining the refund, she buys a new item with the refund money, the new item didn’t cost a cent. The refund money covered it. You follow? This is the strange accounting they did not teach you in school. You learned this on your own. You weren't taught accounting in school, so what were you supposed to do?

I have heard that companies love gift cards. Why? Because they know there’s a chance, however slight, that when you receive a gift card, you’ll forget to use it. It’ll get buried in your sock drawer with your five-dollar sunglasses. I am sure that 99% of the time, gift cards get used. But that 1% that stay in the sock drawer? Target Corporation’s annual revenue last year was $109 billion. You do the math. I could buy a professional soccer club with that windfall.

I have also heard the quote from the late David Foster Wallace that successful ads are ones that “create an anxiety relievable by purchase.” Even though the world is abundant with treasures and plentiful with resources, what’s marketed is scarcity and urgency. Act now, while supplies last!

Lately Brooke and I have tried to go on “spending fasts.” From everything other than the grocery store and gasoline. No takeout food, no restaurants. No Amazon orders of more newborn onesies. Yes, Dean could use a couple more since he’s growing so fast, but we can make do for now with the three that fit. Not one person is going to judge my two-month-old for wearing the same outfit two days in a row. I have seen grown-ups do this all my life, and I never judged them for it. I just hoped they at least had on a new pair of underwear.

I like buying books. But I don’t need that book. Books take up space and they are a bitch to move. They’re like the ugly dog you wish would run out the door forever but you couldn’t live with yourself if it did. Book-purchasing fast it is.

I can find something wonderful to read at the library, enough for several lifetimes. I may not be able to buy the newest novel by Philipp Meyer, or the latest nonfiction by Michael Lewis, but I still haven’t finished reading Liar’s Poker, currently sitting high on my shelf. So who do I think I am to pay $30 for his newest work when my baby needs a bigger onesie? Do I really need a Barnes & Noble membership?

You know I want that $7 Starbucks latte with olive oil in it because what in the hell is that? but my K-Cup and the pot at my office will do for this week. Don’t get me started on all the streaming services I subscribe to and watch once a quarter. With this writer and actor strike, it’ll now take me only 10,000 years to watch all the content on these platforms, instead of the 100,000 it would take if they didn't stop working.

I don’t know of any moderation technique that has worked for me, for any vice. It is all or nothing. Food, drinks, shopping. Moderation takes willpower, it is exhausting. How much brain power do we really have that we can reserve some for stopping ourselves from our impulsions that hit us every second of every day? The cleanest thing and, paradoxically, the easiest thing, once you get over the hump, is to completely fast from it.

Then you look up and after a week you’ve spent not a single dollar. Do you know how incredible of an accomplishment that is for this household? It is the Spartans winning the Battle of Thermopylae. It is remembering the Alamo as if Davy Crockett survived the Spanish forces. It is independence, without San Jacinto.

But a final note—beware! What can this restraint lead to? Overspending the next week. You know what I mean. Moderating your calories all week only to order, in a Saturday-night stupor after consuming a box of wine and three helpings of lasagna, a modest $500 worth of Hearth & Hand decoratives. An entire week’s worth of discipline, gone!

What then? Forget about it. Beat yourself up for five minutes, then get back in the saddle tomorrow.

Amortize the depreciation of the calories, and the dollars.

Cancel a subscription to something and put those future monthly savings under Accounts Receivable.

Commit fraud on yourself for God’s sake if that’s what it takes. Trick yourself into thinking you’re not the glut you believe yourself to be, and after enough trickery, it becomes the truth.

As I said, this is strange accounting. It may have gotten you into this mess, but go easy on yourself—strange accounting can get you out of it, too.