It’s a funny old thing, money. I share a joint account with my husband and all my earnings get chucked in with his. But because I don’t keep a record of what of “my” money has come in and because it’s mostly quite small compared with his salary, I feel awkward making purchases of stupid things – that I nevertheless really want and covet – from our joint account. I leave it to him to get me a handbag with poker winnings or whatever.
But then recently a certain portion of my income has to go directly into a PayPal account. And so I can see from there exactly how much money I have earned. It’s not much, it’s literally just dress money, but it’s completely mine to do with as I please.
(I must point out here that my husband wouldn’t mind at all if I bought myself all of the crazy things I wanted from our joint account … but what can I say, I just feel awkward about it.)
Anyway now I have this amount of money in my PayPal account and I genuinely can’t think of what to buy with it. I have tried buying some things with it but they arrive and I look at them and think “Nah”, and send them back.
And this is me being the most acquisitive person alive. I just want stuff. For the wrong reasons, but I just want it. But now I can have basically whatever I want from the High Street – I find I don’t want it. Perhaps what that feeling, when I felt like I had no spending power (even though I did), was not that I wanted the thing, but I wanted to feel like I had the money to get the thing.
Does that make any sense? Don’t answer that.
But, the other day I saw that Roxanne Assoulin is now available on Net a Porter. And Roxanne Assoulin has been making for a while now these colourful enamel bracelets that I have seen Leandra Medine from Manrepeller wearing and coveted like mad. Roxanne also spent years designing for other people and now, at 63, has her own incredibly successful line and Lord knows I want to give some karma to late-in-life-success.
So I bought these Rainbow Brite bracelets, which at £161 felt expensive but not crazy. They are bright and cheerful and modern and wearable. They are jewellery without being jewellery and I love them.
I put them on Instagram and I had many questions about their provenance – and so I thought I would mention them here, too.
Have been sitting here for ages turning over all of the things I want to say about about this – I have many, many things to say about this – but it boils down to fuck, money is soooo complicated, isn’t it?
Those bracelets, on the other hand, are not at all complicated. They are just lovely. What a nice present to buy yourself!
I firmly believe that women should be financially independent (where possible) and try to have some running away money squirrelled away. It’s easier in theory than in practice though! Nonetheless, I do try to put a little aside each month, and find that when it’s taken me so long to save it, I’m more reluctant to spend it. I do like your bracelets though.
I agree with you – I’ve always had my own account and kept back some of my earnings to keep to save or spend on myself so that I can basically do whatever I want with it and no one can question how much haircuts actually cost (an eternal mystery to men!). I am also very lucky in that my job gives me a (small) bonus once a year and so I always put 10% of it aside to buy something really nice just for me, and those bracelets are just the ticket!
I just couldn’t bring myself to buy my husband a quite expensive birthday or Christmas present out of money that he has earned for us!
I too have been coveting those bracelets after seeing them on manrepeller. Well done on getting them, I’m sure they’ll spark joy whenever you look at them x