So Many Shoes, So Little Money – Blog

Sex and the City

January 22nd, 2009

In his inaugural speech, Obama quoted the Bible: “the time has come to set aside childish things.” The question is does that include an obsession with shoes? He asked the nation to grow up and cited our “badly weakened economy” as a consequence of not just “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices…”

So yes, sadly, it applies to shoes – or at least our obsession with them. A poll of 1,057 women by the Consumer Reports National Research Center for shopping magazine, ShopSmart, found that U.S. women on average own 19 pairs of shoes, although they only wear four pairs regularly; 15 percent have over 30 pairs.

Carrie: [In shoe store with Miranda]: Where did all my money go?

Miranda: At four hundred dollars a pop, how many of these do you own? Fifty?

Carrie: Come on…

Miranda: One hundred?

Carrie: Would that be so wrong?

Miranda: Four hundred dollars times one hundred, there’s your down payment.

Carrie: That’s only four thousand dollars.

Miranda: No, that’s forty thousand dollars!

Carrie: I spent forty thousand dollars on shoes and I have no place to live? I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoe.

Carrie, with her disregard for her spending habits – tossing off hundreds of dollars for things she doesn’t need and will, in all likelihood, never wear – might be incredibly chic but is a very bad financial role model.

Managing your money, taking control of your finances and living within your means requires hard choices. However, if you put off or don’t make the hard choices, they become impossible.

Filed under: Money Management

Tags: Debt, Personal finance, Shopping, spending, Style