Spaving is a portmanteau of the words spend and save, and it refers to the act of spending to save money. There are many ways that we may be influenced by retailers to spave, and it can cause us to spend more than we intend to.

Have you ever noticed that an online retailer offers free shipping, but that the spending threshold to get the free shipping seems to always be a little more than what you were intending to spend? The retailer is doing this to encourage you to spend the extra $15 on items to bump your total from $85 to the $100 free-shipping threshold. But then you realize there isn’t anything for $15, and that the only item you want is $35, so you end up spending $120 instead of $85 with the justification of free shipping. The problem is that in addition to overspending, you also acquired an additional item that you likely did not need. When looking at this example independently, it’s not really a big problem, but over the course of a year, you may repeat this behaviour several times resulting in hundreds or thousands of overspent dollars and several items more in your home that you’ll probably end up throwing away.

Another example of spaving is buying in bulk. You may only need one pound of cheese for your meal planning, and the grocery store sells it for $5/lb. But you know that the wholesale grocer sells the same cheese in bulk 5lb blocks for $4/lb which of course is a better value. So instead of buying the amount of cheese you need for $5, you end up with 5lbs of cheese and spending $20 in the name of value. In this case, you end up spending 4 times more than you needed to, and the cheese may spoil before you can consume it all. Another important consideration with buying in bulk is the storage space required. Growing up in suburbia, it was common for all homes to have a large freezer – usually located in the home’s basement or garage – in addition to their refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen to store all the frozen goods purchased in bulk. Similarly, most homes had a walk-in pantry to once again store all the food items purchased in bulk. When you consider the extra square footage required for the pantry and freezer, the cost to operate the freezer, and the cost of waste from spoiled food that expires before consumption – buying in bulk is likely to cost you more than what you are saving.

Front-loaded cost plans are a way that spavers pay a discounted up-front cost to save in the future. Many subscription plans for media or the gym where the cost to pay for a full year is cheaper than the sum of paying per month for 12 months. Timeshares usually include a high up-front payment for guaranteed vacation time at a selected resort for several years into the future. There are credit cards that cost $500 per year but offer discounted flights as a benefit. Although you may feel like you are winning in each of these scenarios, it’s more likely that the large corporation has outsmarted you. If you become injured, disinterested, or move to a new city, the monthly gym subscription can easily be cancelled, while the yearly cannot. Although you may think that the time share in Cancun is a great deal (in the long run), you will realize that after a few years, you are tired of going to the same place, and you’d like to explore a little more of the world – good luck trying to cancel the timeshare; they are notoriously difficult to get out of. And you will realize, like I did, that the discounted flight the credit card company promoted, is subject to a multitude of terms and conditions making it all but impossible to use.

The important message that I am trying to convey is that retailers never have your best interest in mind; they are always trying to upsell you while making you feel like you are making a good decision. In each of the above examples, the merchant is offering you a means to save money (in the future) by paying more than you intended up front. Be aware of spaving and consider it next time you are deciding to buy more than you had intended to.