Sometimes to get inspiration for blogging, I read my own blog. This next entry is the result of two hours worth of sifting through the past two years of my life as it appears on the internet. You can decide if it's working or if I should be getting my inspiration elsewhere…

I’ll never forget the day my mom and dad came into my bedroom, shut the door, and had a discussion with me about how they believed I had a “shopping addiction” which had become a “serious problem.”  I was a freshman in college. I made $75 a week and didn’t own a credit card. Apparently they defined “addiction” as spending a third of my paycheck on couple of 2-for-$20 shirts I found on the clearance rack at The Gap. Serious problem? I thought not. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss their concern as delusional paranoia, given what years of uninhibited shopping has done to my financial stability.

With each passing year, I become a little more successful. This results in career promotions, which in turn result in my own delusion that I can afford everything from $75 Lacoste polo shirts to $400 Coach bags. Online shopping is simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. I remember when I used to flip through the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogs to get ideas of similar things I could buy at cheaper venues. Now I just boot up, enter my credit card number and click “submit.” I remember when $150 for a pair of jeans seemed outrageous. And I remember when my entire shoe collection could fit in one closet. Ahhh, the good old days.

The truth is that I just really love clothes. They’re kind of like a hobby for me, or a pet. Instead of taking my dog for a walk, I spend Saturday afternoons carefully ironing a stack of dresses and button down shirts. Instead of taking my cat to be groomed, I bring my heels to the shoe guy at Macy’s.

But these are the choices every girl in her 20s makes. Do we spend our money on six pairs of this season’s BCBG heels, or do we put it toward a down payment on a house in the burbs? Do we satiate or need for immediate gratification, or do we steal away our salary for later use on that white picket fence we are supposed to be dreaming of?  I don’t know about you gals, but I’m not the house kinda girl. For now my paychecks are rolling straight to Target National Bank, and I’m not making any apologies.