Should I Buy It? A Flowchart to Help You Decide

Like an awful lot of people these days, I've cut back on my purchases. I still buy the things I need, but I don't buy very many things that I want but don't need. When I find myself lusting after some shiny new thing, I stop and ask myself, "Will this make my life and my family's life better, or worse?" I take into account the floor or closet space the thing would occupy, the maintenance it would need, its resale value, its attractiveness, and so on. If the positives outweigh the negatives, I'll buy it.

The flowchart above, created by April Dykman of Get Rich Slowly, is another way to help you decide whether or not to buy something. She used it to help her decide whether or not to buy a fancy cooktop for her new kitchen (she went with a less expensive, but equally durable, standard range).

The purpose of my "should I buy it" question and the purpose of April's flowchart is the same: to force you to stop and think before buying something. Sometimes, a small delay between impulse and action is all it takes to avoid making an unnecessarily costly purchase. As April writes: "f there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in credit card debt, it’s that the seemingly small things accumulate quickly. The only way to combat this is to be conscious of what we buy — and why we are buying it."

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Comments

[Andrew de Geofroy]

I have recently considered buying a new car to replace one or both of the cars my wife and I have. After running the numbers, I figured out that I could have a new Prius and be paying not much more than what I already do for gas for our two junkers. After some time thinking and not acting on my impulses, I realized that ultimately it was not something I need right now, and I'm not in a place in my life where I want to take on the commitment of a car loan. Sure, that new car would have made me happy for a while, but after a few months I know I'd grow resentful of being bogged down with a car loan, especially since I've tried very hard to avoid any sort of debt whatsoever (which isn't easy to do in America these days).