Everyone thinks, “if I was rich, I’d buy ________.” If I was rich, I’d buy an apartment in Chelsea in NYC, a dozen pair of designer shoes, and a long trip to Africa. I’d also probably go back to school for a Ph.D. in sociology (I really enjoy my work, but becoming a working sociologist – doing fieldwork, writing books, teaching at a prominent university – is my dream job) and buy a really expensive piece of jewelry from Tiffany’s.
But no matter how much money I had, one thing I would never spend money on is a maid service. I grew up in a very upper-middle class area where having a “cleaning lady” was extremely common. Eventually, when I was in middle school, my family hired a woman who came to clean our house once every other week. Even as a seventh-grader, I found the arrangement morally repugnant and unnecessarily indulgent. Although I never raised this idea to my parents, there was absolutely no reason that we three able-bodied children couldn’t clean up our own messes, and it probably wouldn’t have killed us to have taken on some responsibility for keeping common areas in the house clean, also. And I still feel that way. No matter how rich or busy I become, there is absolutely no reason that I can’t clean my own home, and I would never buy a home that was too “unmanageable” to keep clean by myself.
Paying to have my hair professionally colored comes in as a close second, in terms of something I would never pay for. My hair isn’t highlighted, so paying someone upwards of $50-$75 to perform an action that basically amounts to shampooing my hair is ludicrous, no matter how much money I might have.
What would you never pay for, even if you were rich?
