Purchasing is not only about buying what we need, but also considered as a fun activity in the majority of the wealthy nations. This is a negative development because it wastes our valuable time and often an unnecessary expenditure.
Most successful people say time is the precious element in the world. It can never be bought but only be spent. Such a priceless commodity should be utilized with utmost wisdom, instead of spending on the items that doesn’t matter much. We could use that in several useful ways such as, being with our loved ones, acquiring new skills, exploring something new. For an instance, people in USA on an average, spends about an hour every week on such kinds of shopping, which sums to about 52 hours a week. Experts say that, any new skills could take 20 hours to master, so if this time was spent there, atleast 2 skills can be learnt each year.
A popular sales company reports that 81% of the people going on shopping as a leisure activity ends up buying that product. It also adds that these consumers feel it as an achievement, while on the reality this is the most ineffective use of the hard-earned money. For example, my cousin had this bad habit of buying items that are not needed, when going on the window-shopping. In order to make her give up on this habit, I asked her to send me the money equivalent to the price of the item, whenever she thinks of buying something that is not an absolute requirement. We saved a huge sum of money at the year end, which we donated to the flood relief. This incidence made our family proud and happy.
In conclusion, shopping which is done as a fun activity is a complete waste of time and frequently leads to unnecessary expenses. This aggregated time and money, if channelized on the productive things could add an exponential value to our life and society.