Buyer's remorse for everything

granfdad
2025-05-11T13:03:04Z

I don't know if this counts as ~health.mental or ~life, so admins please feel free to move this as you see fit.

A few days ago, I bought some Gameboy games for my Analogue Pocket from a local retro game store. I'm sitting here, looking at those cartridges and thinking only one thing.

"Why did buy these? They could just be a ROM".

This particular problem is easy to solve, I beat the games on cart and then sell it back to the store I bought it from. I lose some money, sure, but chalk that up to a learning experience. I just bought a new bag, I'd been researching options for months and finally picked one up when I was in the city. I felt like shit for the rest of the day because it was $30 more expensive than another option, even though the bag I bought:

was available IRL so I knew it would fit all my stuff, unlike the online-only alternative.

was made my city, with a lifetime warranty and a repair service available, unlike the alternative.

This seems like an unhealthy mentality to have towards buying things. Sure, a decent amount of restraint should be exercised when making purchases, but I have this feeling every single time I buy something. Even food does this to me to some degree (but usually that's because my eyes are bigger than my stomach, lol). I think this is a battle between my internal minimalist and my internal consumer, and I don't really know how to go about dealing with it.

Does anyone else have similar experience? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Alternatively, tell the story of your worst moment of buyers remorse :)

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