Last year my mom and sisters and I were shopping in a cute boutique, where we stumbled across a pair of black mules. I loved the shoes, but the shop didn’t have my size, so I asked the store owner to give me a call when she got them back in stock. I didn’t hear from her for months, and every so often I’d look up the shoes at an online retailer, think about buying them, and shake my head at the full price. My mom’s words kept coming back to haunt me, and I knew they’d probably go on sale eventually—or I could live without them. Besides, I didn’t “need” these shoes in the least. But every time I saw someone wearing a pair of chic black mules, I thought about this one particular pair and how if I owned them, I’d wear them all the time. Then one day my mom called. “Remember those black shoes you wanted?” “Yeah,” I said. “Did you ever buy them?” “No, I kept waiting for them to go on sale,” I replied. “Well, I just found them at that same store, in your size, at 40 percent off.” Sold. The funny thing is that I sort of knew that would happen eventually, because practicing delayed gratification usually pays off.
That example included a yearlong wait, but the sentiment rings true. So for one whole month, don’t buy anything deemed as a “want,” but put it on a mental or real list to purchase in the future. Whether it’s a tote bag for work, a new pair of brown boots to replace the ones that fell apart last season, your favorite face lotion that’s on the expensive side, a book you’ve been wanting to read, a plane ticket for an upcoming trip—acknowledge that you want these things and may eventually buy them, but wait at least thirty days before you do so. The payoff? When you do bite the bullet, it’ll feel like a real treat, something you’ve earned.