Shopping habits in America

The answer to spending less is not coupons or blow-out sales.

Shop less. That's it. Yes, it is wise to negotiate the price of things. Take advantage of coupons and deep discounts when they makes sense. But if you want to save money and improve your finances, shop less. Take, for example, clothes. The U.S. apparel industry today is a $12 billion business and the average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The dollar figures are of little significance since it accounts for just 3.5 percent of a family's expenses, on average. What is significant is whether that money is spent on need or waste. The answer is, largely, waste. In 1930, the average American woman owned nine outfits. Today, that figure is 30 outfits -- one for every day of the month.

The Daily Mail reports that women in the U.K. buy half of their body weight in clothes each year, and the average woman in England has 22 unworn items in her closet.  The Self Storage Association reports that Americans spend $24 billion each year to store their stuff in 2.3 billion square feet of these units, an industry which has proven to be the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. The Wall Street Journal calls the industry "recession resistant." A few years ago market research firm OnePoll surveyed 2,000 women and found that each year chicks spend more than 100 hours on 30 trips to shop for clothes, 15 shoe-shopping excursions taking 40 hours, and a full 50 hours per year window shopping. Sure, we all need to do some shopping. That is life. But this is not shopping-because-you-need-stuff-to-live. This is shopping for sport. After all, that same survey found that these same women spend 95 hours and 84 trips shopping for food -- which one could argue is a daily need actually requiring frequent shopping. Yet this task occupies half the time of shoe, clothes and window shopping. Smarter Shopping Means Less Stress.