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Opinion | Stressed? Be footloose and debt-free

Michelle Ludwin, ludwinma@muohio.edu

(ERIN KILLINGER | The Miami Student)

Rose Feller. Lawyer. Sister. She has the best shoe collection portrayed in a movie.

In one of the opening scenes of In Her Shoes, Maggie Feller, played by Cameron Diaz, opens up her sister's closet. She pushes the clothes to the left and right and there it is: shelves full of shoes neatly displayed in see-through cases. It looks almost like a shoe museum featuring any type someone is looking for. As an obsessive shoe shopper, it made me feel better about how many shoes Rose Feller owned. I am definitely not the person that owns one pair of gym shoes, one pair of work shoes and one pair of slippers. My shoe collection takes up about one of my three closets at school. My closet at home has built in shelves designated for shoes. They all get rotated between seasons and it keeps growing every season. I mean, I cannot wear the same flats to Skipper's and then to work the next day.

Some may say I have a problem because I become a kid in a candy shop when I enter a shoe store. My mom always said, "Before you buy something ask yourself is this purchase for a need or a want." Well, when it comes to shoes, I always make sure that the purchase is a need. Then the question is raised is why shoes? In the words of Rose Feller, "Because they always fit."

Shoes-shopping is just a small piece of a larger problem in the American culture. I was sitting in King Library pondering through the New York Times website when I decided to move onto my homework. I was reading an article for my American Studies class. Sharon Zukin wrote an article in 2003 titled, "Attention, Shoppers: Your Dreams in Aisle 3." The article talks about how shopping has shaped the landscape of American culture. Sometimes we search for our dreams within shopping. Our culture always wants the next addition just to flaunt to anyone that takes notice. It becomes a status symbol. But are our ambitions and dreams really in the next pair of Steve Maddens I decided to charge?

When I go to buy shoes, I actually do think about what I am going to wear with. I do a mental scan of my wardrobe and then decide if it will be worth the money. The answer usually is yes. There is just one huge problem with this. This practice of spending causes debt, addiction and finding my dreams in the wrong places.

I probably will be very grateful to my parents after this semester because they put me on a budget. I had to sit down over break, print off my statements and have a mental breakdown when my parents calculated just how much I spent from August to December.  This was not the first time I was told I had to change my spending habits. However, this time I actually listened. My spending habits changed and I stayed within the tight perimeters I was placed in. It was time to actually decide if spending an enormous amount of money was worth it. It taught me a valuable lesson because once I graduate college, the cord is cut and I am financially responsible for myself. There is no one to fall back on, and I am pretty sure Michael Kors' Berkley heels will not be paying the bills.

So I applaud those who are working through college; the savers and those who are financially independent. It is rough trying to change a large habit and save money. However it is a lesson that every college student needs to learn before they are fully independent. What we want in life usually has to be fulfilled through money. Our dreams of working for CNN or finding the cure for cancer do not lay within the Nordstrom department store and especially those Jimmy Choo shoes. You also have to weight those options between feeding yourself and material items. If we want those tangible objects then we have to save, save oh and save some more. Consumerism needs to stop taking over our lives and our values. Shoes will always fit and make me happy, but money will give me a life.


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