"Eight pounds fifty? For 250g of chocolate?"
I was in the supermarket this week when the woman in front of me was properly upskuttled at the checkout, scanning the price tag on a Lindt Gold Bunny and doing a double take. So did I. Eight pounds fifty. For chocolate in gold foil with a ribbon round its neck. And I thought it was the packaging that was the biggest cost!
It will not be in my basket, I told her. She raised her eyebrows. But she bought it anyway. There was clearly an air between her and her partner. “It’s for the kids,” he said with a nervous smile.
I have been thinking about that moment ever since.
Not because I am judging her. She can spend her money however she likes. But because I keep asking myself — what was she actually buying? The chocolate? I doubt it. You can get perfectly good chocolate for a fraction of that. She was buying the feeling. The gold foil. The ribbon. The sense that Easter had been done properly.
And I understand that completely. Because my mother did Easter properly too.
She used to take real eggs, pierce them at each end with a pin, and blow the contents out. She would fill the shells with melted chocolate, let them set, and hand them to us with felt tips so we could draw faces on them. Every year. Without fail.
They cost almost nothing. They were completely imperfect. The chocolate was not so neatly in the shell, some spilled on the outside. The faces were wonky. And they were the best Easter eggs I have ever had.
I am doing it this weekend for my own (very grown up) children. Because some things are worth repeating.
But here is what I want to talk about. Prices right now are not just a little high. They are eye-watering and they are, by most accounts, about to get worse. In that environment, the question of what we say yes to and what we say no to has never mattered more.
A financial boundary is not a budget. I do not like the word budget. It sounds like a punishment. A financial boundary is something different. It is the quiet internal moment where you ask yourself: is this actually mine to say yes to?
Not: can I afford it? Though that matters.
Not: do I deserve a treat? Though you probably do.
But: does this purchase reflect what I actually value?
The woman with the Lindt bunny may have asked herself that question and answered yes. In which case, eight pounds fifty is entirely reasonable. We pay for what we value. That is how it should work.
The problem is most of us are not asking the question at all. We are on autopilot. Reaching for the gold foil because it is Easter and that is what you do and the display is beautiful and there is a small part of us that does not want to be the person who does not buy it.
That is not a financial decision. That is a social one. And social decisions made in supermarket aisles are costing us a fortune.
Here is what I have learned from years of working with people on their relationship with money. The people who feel most financially free are rarely the ones earning the most. They are the ones who know what they actually want. They have thought about it. They have decided. And because they have decided, they can say no to the things that do not matter with almost no effort — because they are already saying yes to the things that do.
My mother’s Easter eggs cost almost nothing. I remember them thirty years later. I will not remember the contents of my supermarket trolley from this week.
That is a financial boundary. Knowing the difference between what lasts and what is just gold foil.
Before you buy the bunny (and I am not saying do not buy the bunny) just pause for one second. Ask yourself what you are actually buying. If the answer is joy, tradition, love, a genuinely good piece of chocolate — yes. Go ahead.
If the answer is habit, or vague social pressure, or because Easter requires it — put it back. Make some eggs instead. Get some felt tips.
Be warm. Be wealthy.
Happy Easter.