Oh wait... that's wrong. We almost always have nothing to buy.
So when Redmart sends us a discount code to use, we get pretty anxious.
We shop at Redmart every once in a while. It's an online supermarket with free delivery after certain spend limits. They do have quite good deals but you have to wait for them or search for them.
We don't buy stuff from Redmart regularly. Actually, we don't buy stuff from Redmart cos we have nothing to buy. But Redmart runs their marketing campaigns quite aggressively and they send out coupon codes every couple of months. Last month, we received a coupon code for $10 off for every $80 spend. That's a nice 12.5% discount.
So obviously we'd be interested to stock up some stuff if possible.
It took close to 2 hours to search for stuff to buy. Cos even though we were getting a 12.5% discount, we would want to only buy stuff we need or wanted. We'd try not to buy frivolous stuff which we wouldn't use.
This basically meant we needed to get stuff which would last for a long time and we would eventually use it as time passed. So we got probably 6 months worth of laundry detergent, toilet cleaning solution, dish washing liquid, some canned food, some drinks.
The thing is, I wasn't running short of any of the stuff which I bought. I still had a couple of months' worth still in the storeroom. Nonetheless, we couldn't let 12.5% discount slip by so we went ahead and bought it. Even without the discount, the items were comparable to the usual supermarkets so we were getting a really good deal.
The only problem is finding space in the storeroom.
Anyway, to me that's induced spending. I mean sure. I love getting a good deal. But yet, it's not really time to buy the stuff. I bought the stuff probably 2 months ahead of time. So I've this love hate relationship with marketing. Marketing really makes people spend more than they naturally would. And yes, I probably spent "more" last month buying stuff I didn't really need yet.
(I didn't really spend more last month, cos I had difficulty hitting my minimum $500 on both our UOB cards last month even with this additional $70 spending.)
I mean it in the sense that I didn't need to buy the stuff yet and yet I did.
There's been many other instances of this.
For a period, DBS was running a credit card promotion. I think it was 2 months ago. Where if you apply for a new POSB Everyday card, or DBS Black card, or DBS Women's card, or DBS Live Fresh card, they would give you a rebate of $70 (existing DBS customers 14%) or $100 (new DBS customers 20%) if you spend $500 in the first month from the date of approval of the card.
We applied for a couple of the cards and used them to pay for my wife's dental requirements and we are now waiting for the rebates. The thing is we applied for A LOT of cards just to whack $500 on them. So we cleared a couple of cards from her dental services but had to bring forward other spending to hit the $500 on the other new cards. This resulted in a snowball effect where I had difficulty hitting my minimum $500 on both our UOB cards last month. And we are expecting the effects of this decision to last for a few more months, meaning I would probably be pushing up my minimum spend by prepaying my utilities and telco bills for this month and maybe next month.
Not to mention that in the next month, the rebates will probably come in and I would have more funds to allocate around as well. Hey, I'm not complaining. It's a good thing. More disposable "income" to buy necessities. I'll just have to channel the cashflow around to make sure everything works optimally. I'll also need to keep spending in control cos with the rebates in the other cards, it's tempting to just buy some additional stuff just to clear out the positive balance on the other cards. It makes me edgy when I have to manage multiple cards so I tend to want to spend the rebate so that I can "case closed" and keep the cards in the drawer.
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