Recently I’ve come to the realization that I make it impossible for people to get me gifts. Last year I wrote an article joking that the reason I’m hard to shop for is that everything I want doesn’t exist, but in reality it is because I constantly buy things for myself that I want. In fact, just last week I dropped close to $50 bucks on comics merchandise for myself – two weeks before Christmas. The worst part is that a few days prior my girlfriend had asked what I wanted for the holiday, and my answer was “I don’t really need anything.”
The idea of needing things is something I usually bring up around any holiday in which gifts are involved. Every Christmas and birthday for the last three years or so, I have used the line “I don’t need anything” when people ask me what I would like. And yet, I still buy the things I want in the weeks leading up to or following that holiday.
So, this New Year’s I think I’m going to try to cut back on spending for my wants and wait for these special times during the year. I look at my spending and that of the rest of the country and most of the money we spend fulfills our wants much more than our needs. We need to move away from this thinking and look at how we spend our money. Perhaps by this time next year I’ll have some money put away 0 and I’ll have an answer for when people ask what I want for Christmas.
-Nick Dutro, Editor-in-Chief