Do You Feel Guilty Spending Money When The Economy Sucks?

Yesterday I found a china cabinet and liquor cabinet that would work great in our dining room. I have been looking for a china cabinet casually for about two years--it is one of those pieces of furniture I knew I would eventually (there is very little cabinet space in the kitchen), but I couldn't find one in the right dimensions that was the right finish and the right price and the right Arts And Crafts Meets Modernism style. And when Shiner moved in a year ago he brought a lot of wine and liquor that is being stored mostly on the floor in a corner of the dining room. So these furniture purchases have been a long time coming, and through juducious use of my tax refund I can afford them without dipping into my "slush fund" or seriously impeding my ability to meet my 2008 goals. The furniture will be about $1800 including shipping and I will need to "find" $1400 to hit my 2008 non-retirement savings goals. That's an amount I can do, though of course it will be more of a stretch.

Then I wake up to NPR reporting that Bear Stearns got bought by JP Morgan Chase and I started thinking, "Oh no! We just went on vacation! The economy is in the toilet! This is no time to go on a spending rampage, buying frivolous things like furniture! My God, woman, you just bought groceries yesterday, do you think you're made of money? The only reason you want a china cabinet is so you have somewhere to put fancy wedding china, but no one can afford to buy you fancy wedding china! We're all going to be eating catfood before the years is out! And my god, what will the cats eat then?"

This is largely foolishness. The vacation money was earmarked savings. The furniture would be bought with cash. Well, technically I have neither "done" my taxes or "received" my refund but I got far enough in TurboTax before it ate my info to know how much I'll be getting, and until that money comes in I can float it from my slush fund. The point is I won't be going into debt either way, and I'm in fine shape apart from this expense. But the frenzied media coverage of the economy made me seriously reconsider myself. My instinctive reaction seemed to be that no matter how I was doing financially, that I should save as much as I can and buy as little as possible--basically, that the national economy should dictate my personal economics. To some extent that's true. These days I would not want to quit my job to raise capital for my new pet rock business. But neither do I want to eat stone soup and start squirreling away for global economic collapse. The way I see it, buying mid-range furniture I've been needing for a long time, with money I have, falls in a comfortable spot along that continuum. I just wish it felt a little more comfortable. But buying grown up furniture has always been scary to me. Shiner and I will go to the store and look at the finish in person. If we still like it, I think I'm going to take the plunge.

No, it is not the most cautious course of action. Yes, I could bow to my fears about the national economy and put that money in my emergency savings instead. It would get me to my goal a couple months faster. But it seems so... Tin foil hat. I don't know. How much will economic concerns shape your spending in the coming months?