Keeping shopping under wraps
Gail MacNeil* knows women’s shopping secrets. As the owner of a Toronto boutique, she helps her well-heeled customers stash their old purses inside the expensive leather handbags they’ve just bought — no need for logo-emblazoned shopping bags to spotlight their lunchtime shopping. She has carefully split splurges between credit and debit cards, so there isn’t a red flag number on either account. And many times she has put her shop’s European imports on layaway. “They’ll pay a little bit at a time so there’s not that ‘Wow, what was that for?’ when their husbands see the monthly bill,” she explains.
MacNeil, 42, admits she uses many of these same purchase-hiding strategies herself. “I’ve had a great day shopping, but I’ve got all those bags to get through the door,” she says. Like some of her customers, she keeps her packages in the trunk of her car overnight, and then slips them into her closet when her husband isn’t around. If he asks if something is new, her response is usually: “I’ve had this for ages — don’t you remember it from last year?”
It’s startling the number of financially secure women who keep their spending on what might be considered personal indulgences under wraps. Many complain that men just don’t understand how much women’s clothing and accessories cost. Others say they don’t want to dampen a perfectly good shopping day by having to justify their purchases. And some women’s secret shopping habits are so intrinsically linked to how they were brought up, they don’t ever stop to think about why they squirrel away their packages.
What’s the problem if a woman who can afford it uses her personal debit card to soften the blow of Italian leather pumps on the family Visa bill? Potentially plenty, say experts, if she’s avoiding difficult conversations with her partner about underlying financial and emotional issues. Most psychologists cite money matters as one of the top things couples fight about, so keeping financial secrets can be explosive. And lack of communication about money can point to deeper issues of control within a relationship.
A questionable inheritance
As with so much in our lives, our attitudes toward shopping — and saving — can often be traced back to our family. So if your mother hid her new little black dress at the back of the closet, you’re much more likely to do the same. “People duplicate the practices they observed in their own families, and it can easily carry over even when women earn their own money,” says Marilyn Miller, a psychologist who for more than 20 years has helped Toronto couples talk more openly about money. “Just because you’ve changed your circumstances doesn’t mean you’ll change your thinking.”
Shop owner MacNeil points to her mother and sister as role models for her own tendency to keep her shopping secret. She recalls one particularly dramatic incident with her older sibling. “My sister was engaged and her fiancé was staying with us. She made these huge wardrobe purchases and I remember him finding the bags in the closet — the tags still on — and he absolutely flipped out.” Her sister had been dividing up her spending among various credit cards, but got caught.
Just as we’ve picked up our shopping foibles from our mothers and sisters, many of us are passing our stealthy habits along to our daughters. “When I spend money on myself, I feel guilty and don’t want to bring the bags in,” says Cathy Bader*, 46, a fashion designer in Vancouver. Her husband doesn’t question her shopping for herself — even encourages it — yet she’ll hide bags in the garage before sneaking them inside. Now her kids are picking up her behaviour. “I have two teenage girls and when they come home with bags they run right to their rooms without showing what they’ve bought. So I’ve already instilled this in them.”
