How to stop yourself

from spending all your money on elbow cream

When I was at sixth-form college, doing English Lit A-Level, our teacher began the course with an idea that has stayed with me. He told us about the plays that Shakespeare had written, and that we would study a couple of them. He told us there were also books about Shakespeare, by literary critics or historians, and so here was a list of those that we could read too.

And then he looked at our panic-stricken teenage faces and added, kindly, “But just remember that Shakespeare himself never read a single book about Shakespeare.”

It is a notion that has soothed me ever since. (It also gave me the courage to go to the library and read a book about Shakespeare.) After this memory came back to me last night, I started thinking about other soothing notions that help me deal with daunting tasks. It is January, and I am trying to pay off debts, and also to sort out the flat we recently moved into. So in the interest of these two very Januaryish pursuits, I want to share my best ones with you.

When trying to get rid of stuff - and I come from a family of hoarders; we can put hamsters to shame with the size of our metaphorical cheek pouches and our ability to cram more and more things into them - here is what I do.

I look at the thing I have plucked from the pile of withering objects in front of me and ask, do I want to keep this? The answer is always yes. Yes! I have had that for decades! Yes, it was a present from someone, yes, that is meant to be a really useful thing just as soon as I ever get around to finding the other part and attaching it and I know I saw it three house moves ago and - yes. It is always yes. That cost money. Yes!

So then I have to ask myself a secondary question, which is, do I want to keep this more than I want to have a nice house?

Do I want to hang onto this thing more than I want to open the door of my bedroom and see a lovely calm, clear space?

Is it a sunk cost? As in, yes, I paid good money for it, but would I buy it now? Does keeping it in a pile of odds and ends somehow mean I get its money worth?

The answer to those ones is almost always no.

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You can ask yourself the same question about shopping. Do I want to buy this banana yellow striped duvet set that just popped up on an Instagram advert because the algorithm is my friend now and knows that I deserve this kind of childlike joy on my bed?

Yes! Yes I do!

But do I want it more than I want to clear my overdraft? Do I want to lie under the banana yellow duvet cover struggling to get to sleep because of the credit card debt that nags like a pea beneath a mattress? Will the stripes help?

Deep breath. No, I don’t want it that much, actually. I don’t want it more than a lovely clear bank account and a gradually growing sense of relief in my heart, even though the debts might feel insurmountable. Little by little, and being kind to ourselves, without mistaking that kindness for shopping, we will get there.

We will age our money like a fine wine, we will work on extending the time between it arriving in our bank accounts and it leaving us. We will become better parents to it, not kick it out the door and make it leave home before it even had a chance.

I mutter to myself, as I resist using it, you are ageing your money, you are letting it stay.

Not so I can never buy anything again - but so I can pay for the things I actually love, the things I care about, longer-term, rather than all these short term wants. I’m not interesting in being Scrooge. If we mature our money for the things we love, the hope is that we won’t spend the rest of our lives paying off the debts on things we only liked.

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Some people fear flying. They think the plane is going to crash because how can it survive up there, just dangling in the air? To those people I say, ah, but the air around that plane is absolutely full. Padded full of molecules working together in incredible harmony; built structures that hold that plane aloft. Like a super strong duvet of woven gases, a whole thing, a whole sky. In the same way that skin is the largest organ in your body, even though you never think about it. The sky is a skin. It’s the biggest organ I can see.

And so, when the temptation to spend money is so strong, to fill that void, bring that shiny new thing into our lives, we have to transfer that exciting tingle onto the not buying. Into what might feel like nothingness but really isn’t. To see the not-spending as a thing. You are investing in calm.

Similarly, when we get rid of all the clutter from our homes, we are accumulating space. Space is a wealthy thing! Space is its very own designer piece of furniture! Space is a luxury item that we can create.

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Oh and one more thing - when you start thinking that you must buy this new specific beauty product called elbow cream, or thigh lotion or knuckle oil, for a part of your body you didn’t yet know was to be downgraded, just say to yourself: but the ingredients in this elbow cream do not know that they are elbow cream. They have not read the label! They have no preconceptions of their fate! And the chances are that they are 95% identical to all the other oils and creams already in my life!

I’m not saying this attitude has turned me into a beauty queen, as I slather the same stuff onto my hair as onto my arse - but it sure as hell saves time.

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And now for the final ironic twist: do pay to subscribe to my Substack if you would like! There is lots of fun behind the curtain, the Primrose Hill Diaries are all going in there, more Rightmove Roundups to come and I’m genuinely excited about this year on here. I would like to be able to work on the things that I love. And I love this, and sometimes I think I might love you.

Drawing by Joan Mitchell, untitled, 1983