Are You A Sacrificial Spender?

THE SCENARIO: You need a fun dress for a networking event at the end of the month and pop into a boutique on the way home from work. 

This cute female-founded store has the PERFECT dress for $300, which is a bit more than you typically spend, but doable and totally worth it given how much you love it.. In true shopping holy grail fashion, it fits like a glove, the color lights you up, you can think of endless ways to style it, and your cost per wear will likely be less than your daily latte.

You exit the fitting room feeling like a million bucks, but are hit with a wave of indecision on the way to cash out. You feel some pangs of guilt about the sticker price and start to doubt whether it is a worthwhile purchase. The sales associate can sense your hesitation, and offers you 10% off.  Feeling defeated, you thank her, mumble that you are going to keep looking, and leave the store empty handed. 

Over the next two weeks you spend several hours of time and energy fantasizing about the dress, vetting dupes and sourcing alternatives. You buy a couple of options and nothing works, wasting $30 on shipping and returns, but everything pales in comparison to THE dress…

A week before the event, you start to panic and run out to buy something. You find a dress that costs half as much, sparks half as much joy, and needs rush tailoring. 

In total, you spend $240 (plus 6 hours sourcing and 4 hours perseverating) to feel “just OK”, when you could have spent $270 to feel like a million bucks.

The math is not mathing, Queens…so what gives?

Sacrificial Spending has entered the chat. 

Here at the ASC, we consider Sacrificial Spending to be a purgatorial holding pattern that traps you in that liminal space between having the wardrobe that you believe you deserve and having the soul-aligned wardrobe of your dreams.

Typically driven by scarcity - and often a subconscious commitment to anxiety or chaos - this worthiness proposition can be a direct sightline into limiting beliefs that are no longer serving you.

If you find that you are continually engaged in the act of purchasing but still don’t have a wardrobe that lights you ALL THE WAY up, you are not alone. 

100% of the women on the ASC “Shifting from Impulse Purchasing to Intentional Spending” call last week have experienced this dynamic, and building self-awareness can be super helpful when unraveling Sacrificial Spending behaviors. Getting curious about narratives is a great place to start. 

Some common limiting beliefs linked to Sacrificial Spending are:

“I never have what I need"

"I don’t deserve to have what I want”

“I don’t trust myself to make important decisions"

“I can’t spend that kind of money on myself”

“I have to work really hard for mediocre results”

As we say at the ASC, once we reveal, we can heal, and fortifying self-awareness around this behavior can be pivotal when building the wardrobe - and career, relationships, and life - of your dreams.

Does this resonate? I would love to hear how Sacrificial Spending impacts your purchasing.

 xx Ali