The Designer Bag vs The Robot Litter Box
A few years ago we had a female Managing Director leading our department and she was everything I wanted to be. I had a one on one meeting with her and I remember walking in and just chatting with her and as we were chatting she pulls up this beautiful Givenchy bag and starts looking for something in there. I swear to God I was blinded. Like I couldn’t think straight and I was just like wow, if I ever “make” it, I want to get a Givenchy bag.
Clearly I have a long way to go in terms of “making” it, but getting promoted this year was really big for me. I’m 27 and a freaking Vice President at an incredible company. It still doesn’t even feel real. I had someone come up to me the other day and say congrats because we hadn’t seen each other in a while and that they were surprised I got it because people have been there for 10, 15, 20+ years and are still not promoted. I don’t think they meant it the way I received it but I worked my ass off for this. If you know me well, you know that I’m a person that is obsessed with the extremes. Either I’m all in or completely disengaged, which can be a blessing and a curse. In this case, it was a blessing because I truly lived and breathed getting promoted. If I didn’t know how to do something, I figured it out myself or leveraged my network to learn from them. If I didn’t finish during business hours, I would have no problem sacrificing my social life to finish working. I was truly obsessed with the idea of being promoted and being successful.
Anyway, seeing a woman in a position of power really inspired me to reach for more. I decided that very same day that when I made it to promotion, I would get myself that bag as symbol for that achievement and all of the hard work that I knew it was going to take to get there. I was all set for years - I had the bag picked out and everything. To be honest it looks like a nicer version of my Kate Spade bag that I’ve been carrying for literal years. So promotion day came in mid January and I had thought I was jinxing myself by looking at the bag a few days before the announcement. I still didn’t know if I was forsure gonna get promoted but I had a gut feeling and when it happened, I was just in awe of the moment.
The second best moment after that came a couple weeks later when the bonus came through and the new paycheck. So it was time to get the bag. I had the money to pay for it and I had had it picked out for years. In my mind that bag represented success, hard work, dedication, discipline. Everything. Then I thought to myself, do I really need a $3k bag? For what? I’m all about treating yourself but this was just so ridiculously unnecessary. I asked all of my friends at the tennis club to advise me and to my surprise they all said to get the bag because it’s something I normally wouldn’t buy.
To be fair, the options were to get the bag or this automatic robot litter box. You must know by now that my cat, Lola is the light of my life. However, cleaning her litter box is the single worst part about having a cat. I had been wanting this robot litter box for some time now and I had never pulled the trigger. So I polled my friends and asked if I should get the litter box or the bag. i genuinely thought they would all say the litter box. The litter box was significantly cheaper than the bag at $600ish dollars and it was something that was going to make my life easier. Long story short, my friends thought I should treat myself to the bag but I felt like it was going to be a very irresponsible decision.
When I was growing up, I never got told no. My mom, dad and grandparents would always buy me whatever I wanted so when I moved to New York, I bought whatever I wanted and when I wanted it. Then I realized that minimum payment was not the way to go and quickly found myself in quite a bit of the worst kind of debt possible: credit card debt. Ultimately when it came time to go buy the bag, I thought that it was too irresponsible. It’s more than a month’s rent, even. It’s money I could use to help pay off what I owe or even build my savings account. I do love bags but I just thought it was not the right time. Additionally, I had said I would buy it when I “made it” and even though I’m a VP, this isn’t where it ends. This is not the top, this is just the beginning of what I want to accomplish so I feel like there will be many more milestones and many more bags.
This does mean that I chose the litter box. I cannot tell you how freaking happy I get when I hear the litter box start to rotate. It’s very quiet and it does take over a minute to clean but as long as it’s cleaning itself, I don’t care how long it takes! Lola was super skeptical about it at first and wouldn’t go near it. I had to remove her old litter box so she would have to go in the new one. I went to bed and she still wouldn’t go in there and I was like “oh great there’s $600 down the drain… should have gotten the bag.” This morning, though, I checked the tray of the litter box and clumps of the dirty litter were in there so that means Lola finally warmed up to it. Mommy was gonna be pissed if she didn’t!
So that’s the story of the bag vs the litter box. Me 2 years ago would have never made this choice. My mom still thinks I overspend and I usually do but it’s been a tough lesson to learn and it’s been a journey trying to get my spending under control. I’m not where I want to be but I think having self awareness of what you need to do and making smarter decisions will get me where I need to be eventually. Also this freaking litter box brings me so much joy. It is hands down the best $600 I’ve ever spent if it means I never have to scoop that stupid litter box again!
Am I crazy for getting the litter box? What would you have picked? Bag or litter box? Someone pls tell me I did the right thing…
