It’s not about saving money, it’s about not having to spend at all.
Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Boy: There is no spoon.
Wearing something new gets old quickly 💃
We all need to cover our naked bodies, as much for our sake as for the mental well-being of the rest of mankind. And yes, wearing a new apparel for the first few times ✨feels like magic✨. Everybody stares jealously at you. Your boss takes you more serious, maybe now that you are wearing those new shoes you’ll even get that long wanted pay raise?
And then, slowly and imperceptibly, that newness, that cozy feeling when you look at your attire, fades away. Your outfit becomes once again what is always was to begin with: a thin layer between you and the outside world.
The sooner we realize that spending money on clothing, like spending money on so many other kinds of stuff at best a necessity and at worst a waste of money, the better of we will be financially.
Spending too little on clothing? 👎
As we just saw, spending too much money on clothing is generally a bad idea. But we all do require some attire. So, how can a independently poor person dress up as the trans-financial (rich person born in a poor person’s body), and look the part? Moreover, is there such a thing as spending too little on clothing? According to Vimes, there is:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was written in 1993, a time when $50 could still get you a high-quality pair of boots. But, is the general gist of this story true? Was it ever so?
In my humble experience, it depends. Socks and underwear can last 1–3 years, pants and shirts 5–10 years and coats endure up to 15 years.
Say, I spend ± €400 on a nice coat. That sounds like an awful lot of money. And it is. But what if this delightful high-quality coat (it should be high quality for this trick to work) holds out for about 15 years, then, really, I’ve only paid €27 per year for it!
My point is this: it’s better to buy fewer pieces of attire but of a generally better quality then the fast-fashion peddlers would like us to. As is so often the case, the capitalists of this world are not working in the best interest of you and me, the hardworking proletariat that this society is truly built on. We must resist the temptations of advertisement and throw off the burden of “fashion trends.”
So, expensive is better? 🎩
No. Some brands are costly because they must spend truckloads on marketing. This does not guarantee their quality. It just guarantees that you are paying too much. In our minds, some brands have comparable quality and price, but this isn’t necessarily so.
For example, both Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger have similar prices for comparable garments. But from my experience, I know that the colors in my Hilfiger pants fade out after only one year of wearing them, whereas my Lauren’s still look good after three years. The same goes for Levi’s vs. Superdry: both have nice t-shirts, but my Levi’s shirts have holes in them a lot faster than the Superdry’s. And so on. Find out for yourself which brands last the longest.
Are we there yet? 🚌
No. So far, we have seen that buying fewer cloths and buying quality stuff is a good idea. But we still need to do this on a restricted budget, after all, this is what separates us independently poor, from the poor plebeian classes who simply spend all their disposable income on, let’s face it, colored pieces of cotton.
How to dress for less? 👍
Now that we have established that we should look for high quality and aim to buy less in general, we can truly get started on our shopping spree.
The best time to buy any apparel at all is before you need it. Why? Because when you do need it, you are likely to rush into a decision based on an urgent need instead of a cool and detached vantage point. Imagine it’s the time of the year that all clothing stores put up big “sales” signs. It’s a good exercise to ask yourself 1. What do I require? 2. what is on my nice-to-have-if-cheap-enough list? Only when both answers are sharply in focus, you can go shopping.
But what if the sales-season is months away, and you require something sooner? Or better yet: you are thinking ahead and want to buy something before you’ll need it?
First grade, but second hand 🔄
- Some platforms allow users to sell second hand clothing, like Vinted
- Sellpy goes one step further by enforcing quality pictures and a realistic description of size and wear-and-tear.
- Other platforms and shops no doubt exist near you. Since marketing budgets are naturally limited, you might have to go out and look a bit harder than usually for them.
Now that all is said and done…
An independently poor person isn’t too concerned with “stuff”, be it shoes, clothes, apparels, or other kinds of things. Instead of always pondering what to buy and wear next, we can enjoy the better things in life, like spending time with friends ⛹️♂️🤽♂️ or in nature.⛄️
If we do need to buy something, we try to spend as little as possible on the most enduring and high quality we can find.
Still having trouble making sound choices? The article How Can I Improve My Wardrobe? maybe of further assistance.