I remember an interview years ago with Johnny Carson, in which he was asked what he bought with his first paycheck. He said he had always admired black satin sheets in the movies, and so his first paycheck treat to himself was a set of black satin sheets. The punch line was that the sheets were so slick that he kept slipping out of the bed.
This story was brought to mind today when I visited a friend who had bought herself a set of 400-count sheets for her birthday present to herself. We got to talking about whether we really felt as if we (with relatively secure jobs) could splurge these days (she needed sheets, and found this really nice set online, but it was the LEVEL of the purchase that was the splurge, not the purchase itself).
The conversation, as it is wont to do on a Saturday morning after the farmers' market and over espresso with milk, got into that splurge we had made when we got our first real job, the one that was full time teaching(we are academics) and the one that we bought when the rent was taken care of and there was food in the fridge.
My father had asked me what I would splurge on when I got my first paycheck, and I thought about it, and told him that I had long fantasized about having a very small wine cellar, enough wine that I didn't have to go to the store to buy one bottle at a time to take to a friend's house, or because I needed it for a recipe, or was hosting a dinner party and wanted to serve something more than water with it. So when I got my first paycheck, I went to the grocery store and bought six bottles of wine (in the $6-8 range, if I recall correctly) and a really cheap wine rack. It was my way of telling myself I was no longer a graduate student, and I could plan for the future more than just the next day.
My friend with whom I was having coffee this morning said she remembered it being a food processor. She already had scrimped to have a good coffee maker as that was essential for her life in grad school (I had, and still use primarily, the drip cones you put on top of a coffee cup and use to make one cup at a time).
I know someone else who went to a regular bookstore and bought a novel in hardback(she had haunted used bookstores and cut-out sections for years). These are small purchases in good economic times, but they are signifiers for us of having arrived, having achieved something.
I hope that people don't take this diary wrong. I am not encouraging frivolous spending in dark economic times. I am not gloating about having a job (although I am terribly relieved to have one I can rely on). I was just wondering what other people have done to splurge. I am not talking about "shopping therapy" (which sounds horribly sad), but about something that made you happy once upon a time. It may well be something you still have -- a particular scarf or tshirt you admired, a work of art, a pair of earrings, a tattoo.
What did you do to splurge when you had money to splurge with for the first time?