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Women with Different Salaries on What they Feel Guilty Buying | Glamour

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New York women across every pay bracket admit the same guilty purchase: lunch they didn’t need to buy.

Glamour’s ongoing digital series “Women of Different Salaries” put anonymous New Yorkers of varying income levels in front of the camera to talk money, and the installment on guilty spending turned into one of the franchise’s most relatable entries. Rather than confessing big financial mistakes, the women zeroed in on small, repeated purchases they know they shouldn’t make — and can’t stop making anyway.

• Participants repeatedly named convenience dining and buying work lunches as their top guilty purchase, even though packing a meal the night before would cost a fraction of the price.
• Impulse fashion and beauty buys came up often, with one respondent noting the items “only make me happy for a short while.”
• Drinking out was singled out as the spot where budgeting discipline breaks down — women said they can stay disciplined while traveling or shopping but lose control over rounds of drinks, adding that “the guilt usually kicks in the next day.”

The Lunch Problem

Across every salary bracket represented in the video, the most consistent confession wasn’t about a big-ticket splurge — it was the daily habit of buying lunch instead of bringing one from home. Women described the math in almost identical terms: a meal that costs next to nothing to prep at home turns into an unnecessary daily charge once convenience takes over during a busy workday. The guilt wasn’t about the money being spent on something enjoyable; it was about paying for something mediocre that a little planning could have avoided entirely.

Clothes, Makeup, and the Short-Lived High

Impulse fashion and beauty purchases were the second major theme, and the language participants used was notably specific about the emotional letdown involved. One woman put it plainly, saying the items “only make me happy for a short while,” a line that captured the group’s shared frustration with buying something on a whim only to feel the appeal fade almost immediately. It’s a familiar tension for anyone who follows fashion trends or beauty releases — the purchase feels justified in the moment, then becomes clutter.

“The guilt usually kicks in the next day.”

Drinks, Jewelry, and Where Discipline Breaks

Several women in the series said they hold the line financially while traveling or browsing stores, only to abandon that restraint once drinks enter the equation — buying rounds that add up fast and produce regret by the following morning. Jewelry drew a similar reaction: participants admitted struggling to justify the markup on pieces that carry a steep price relative to their actual value, a frustration that echoes broader consumer complaints about luxury goods pricing, the same dynamic that’s shaped debates around brands discussed in pieces like The Homeless Boy Who Invented Louis Vuitton.

Guilt That Ignores the Paycheck

What ties the whole video together is that financial remorse didn’t track with income level. Women earning more and women earning less both flagged the same categories — food they could’ve made themselves, clothes and makeup with a short shelf life of satisfaction, drinks bought in the moment, and jewelry that’s hard to rationalize once the receipt is in hand. The installment makes its point without a single dollar figure needed: guilt shows up regardless of what’s in the bank account.