Personal fiscal responsibility and loving fashion are many times two opposing forces in my life. On one hand, I want to be a stylish person in my everyday life (even the quiet lounge days) because personal style is important to me — how I present myself to the world matters and is deeply tied to my mood and feeling great. On the flip side, I want to be a financially responsible human being that pays for things in cash money only. Why? Because I definitely know how fast I can dig a hole of debt by paying for my whims with a credit card. I've made a pact in January 2015 to only pay cash and pay down my debt by 2016, and I'm happy to say I've made a considerable dent in my debt and will be debt free by early next year. 

Look, I know I'm not alone in this tightrope balance because it's a topic of conversation at many happy hours (FYI, a money suck worse than fashion, in my opinion) and super easy material for parodies ("Women be shopping #AMIRITE").

And I'm not pretending to tell you how to achieve a balanced financial/fashion life in this post, but more so telling you a cautionary tale about the supposed helpful browser feature that allows you to "save credit card for future use." Let's just say that for anyone wanting to zero out credit card debt this is the devil. Anytime you see this feature when you buy something online, do yourself a favor and turn it off. 

Story time: One time while buying something on Amazon I accidentally had my Visa saved online for future use. I'm like, "Ok, note to self, let's delete that information later." Well, that never happened. So cut to last week when I was feeling pretty tired and in need for a personal reward — for what I don't even know, to be honest — and found myself perusing The Line's New Arrivals section. What did I see? The Mansur Gavriel Lady Bag in Sand. I thought, cool, let me hoard it in my shopping cart and just thrive on this adrenaline of kind of getting the bag I wanted despite the mega-sold-out situation, which is so typical of Mansur Gavriel now. Fast forward to me going to a meeting at work, then coming back to my shopping cart and hitting "enter" to wake up my machine and therefore hitting "purchase."  

Boom.

Instead of being a responsible window shopper online I now became a woman who used her credit card to buy an incredibly expensive bag on a goddamn whim. Despite this, I was kind of thrilled (wouldn't you be?) but that didn't last long until the warm guilt of this hasty action draped over me like a gross itchy wool angora blanket. 

Ugh. Now what?

I'm in the pickle of doing the thing you shouldn't do: tried on an expensive dress that is over my budget when I couldn't really afford it to begin with. I'm pretty sure I'm going to return this gorgeous bag. I think.

But before I do, I want to let you know a couple facts about the Large Mansur Gavriel Lady Bag:

• The Mansur Gavriel Large Lady Bag does indeed fit a 15" Macbook. 
• I can tell you the leather on the Lady Bag is much softer than the bucket bag.
• I can also tell you that the Large isn't so large in real life as I thought it would be. 
• The closure on this is pretty much as flimsy as the bucket bag, meaning it depends on the two strings tied around the Lady Bag, Bucket Bag style.

So now, comes a moral question: While I have this mistake in my hands, should I post a couple pictures of it safely in the crook of my arm? Will that make it harder to get rid of? Isn't that essentially naming the little helpless puppy you can't keep?

People, I'm rambling. I'm in love with this bag, but need direction. I can freelance more and pay for it cash in a few weeks, or I can return it. What would you do?

Do you want it?

Help.

Update: I sold it. Then I bought the black large Lady Bag a couple months later (in cash) then sold that one too. Moral of the story is just turn off "save credit card for future use." 

Thanks for reading!