I work with plenty of women who essentially have no clothing budget. Either they truly can spend whatever they want, or they have a very healthy budget to work with. These are not women who need to shop based on the lowest price.
And yet, I’ll walk into their closets and find wardrobes pieced together from things they grabbed at TJ Maxx when they went in for a candle, a shirt they spotted at Target while picking up things for their kids, and a whole lot of random Amazon orders.
…And this can be a VERY difficult mindset to change (I might argue the hardest).
Not because there is anything inherently wrong with shopping at Target or TJ Maxx. There isn’t.
I have certain tank tops from Target that I buy over and over. Is the quality incredible? Meh. It’s good. But they do exactly what I bought them to do. I wear them working in the yard, doing crafts with my kids, hanging around the house—things where I don’t particularly care what happens to my shirt.
They have a specific purpose.
They are not the tops I’m wearing to a work meeting. They’re not what I’m putting on for dinner with my husband. I’m not expecting a $15 tank top to do the job of a beautifully made piece that needs to fit well, hold its shape and make me feel really good wearing it.
That distinction matters.
Because most of the time, this isn’t actually about money.
For a lot of the women I work with, the issue isn’t that they can’t afford the nicer piece. It’s that spending that amount of money on themselves feels different.
They’ll happily:
Buy the better version for their kids.
Spend money on something their husband needs.
Buy a beautiful gift for their best friend.
Splurge on something special for their sister.
Spend money making their home beautiful.
But then they need a new pair of jeans and suddenly spending $250 on themselves feels completely ridiculous.
So they buy the $60 pair they don’t really love.
Then another pair because those weren’t quite right.
Then they find a pair on Amazon with 14,000 five-star reviews and think maybe those will be the answer.
Eventually, they’ve spent the $250 anyway.
Except they still don’t own the jeans they actually wanted.
This is where “buy less, buy better” gets misunderstood.
I am NOT saying expensive automatically means better. It absolutely does not.
I’m also not saying everyone needs a closet full of designer clothes. There are categories where I think spending more makes a huge difference and plenty of categories where it doesn’t matter nearly as much.
What I am saying is that buying four mediocre versions because you couldn’t justify buying yourself the one you actually wanted isn’t saving money.
Do that over and over again and eventually you have:
A LOT of clothes.
Very few really good pieces.
A closet that feels more overwhelming than useful.
Money tied up in things you don’t particularly love.
And somehow, you’re still shopping because you still feel like something is missing.
That’s the cycle I want women to recognize.
The cheaper purchase is easier to justify.
A $29 shirt doesn’t require much thought. Throw it in the cart. Add it to the Target order. Order it from Amazon at 10:30 at night.
It doesn’t really feel like spending.
A $300 jacket feels different. You stop and think about it. Is it worth it? Will I wear it enough? Do I really need it? Can I justify spending that much?
Those are actually GOOD questions. I want my clients to think about whether something deserves their money before they buy it.
But sometimes underneath all of those reasonable questions is another one:
Do I really need to spend that much on myself?
And that’s a completely different issue.
Because while you’re debating whether you deserve the $300 jacket, you may spend that exact same $300 over the next two months on six random things you barely remember buying.
The money still left your bank account.
It just didn’t build you a better wardrobe.
And those random purchases cost you more than money.
This is the part that gets overlooked.
All of those “it’s fine” pieces are also costing you:
Closet space. Your really good pieces are now mixed in with a bunch of things you kind of like.
Time. You have more clothes to sort through, try on, wash, return, donate and eventually replace.
Decision-making energy. More options don’t automatically make getting dressed easier.
Better future purchases. Every $40 you spend on something mediocre is $40 that isn’t available for the piece that could actually move your wardrobe forward.
Confidence in your own shopping. When enough purchases don’t work out, you start questioning everything you buy.
And then there’s the replacement cycle.
The Amazon top pills. The inexpensive sweater loses its shape. The fabric doesn’t wash well. The shoes were never particularly comfortable to begin with.
So you replace them.
Then replace them again.
Eventually, the thing that felt like the financially responsible choice has cost you the same amount—sometimes more—than buying the better piece in the first place.
This is the mindset shift.
The goal is NOT:
“I need to start buying expensive clothes.”
The goal is:
“I’m going to get much more intentional about what deserves my money.”
Sometimes the intentional choice is the $15 Target tank top because you’re going to wear the crap out of it and it does exactly what you need it to do.
Great. Buy three.
Sometimes the intentional choice is the $400 jacket because the fit is incredible, you’ll wear it constantly, it works with half your closet and you can see yourself owning it five years from now.
Buy that too.
And sometimes the intentional choice is buying absolutely nothing because the $49 shirt is fine—but you don’t need another fine shirt.
This is one of the biggest shifts I watch happen with my clients.
At first, there can be a lot of:
“That’s a lot for a shirt.”
“I don’t know if I can spend that on jeans.”
“Do I really need the nicer one?”
“I’ve never spent that much on myself before.”
And I am never going to tell someone to blow past a budget that makes sense for their family. Your clothing budget is your clothing budget.
But when the money is there and the hesitation is really about allowing yourself to spend it on you, that’s a different conversation.
Because I can usually show you where that money has been going instead.
It’s in the pile of Amazon returns.
It’s in the six Target tops.
It’s in the jeans you bought because they were 40% off but never really loved.
It’s in the TJ Maxx shirt you found when you went in to buy a candle.
The money was spent. It just didn’t build you a better wardrobe.
And once you shift that mindset, the quality of your wardrobe can change incredibly fast.
Not because you suddenly start spending a fortune.
Because the money you were already spending finally has a direction.
You stop accumulating things you feel meh about. You stop constantly replacing things. You stop letting random shopping opportunities decide what ends up in your closet.
Instead, you start building a wardrobe full of really freaking good pieces that you actually want to wear.
That’s the difference between buying clothes and building a wardrobe.
And once you feel that difference, it gets a whole lot easier to leave the random shirt at Target and keep walking toward the diapers.
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