Ethics of Want and Need

I usually have a difficult time buying things that I want though not need; the more I want it, the more I struggle against actually getting it. However, for necessities like food and shelter, I find little room for such scruples. Also, for things that could benefit me in some manner, I have no problem spending more than necessary. For example, I just bought an expensive $20 Moleskine instead of the $2 Wal-Mart Notebook; I justify this extravagant spending by noting that I tend to use more carefully and thoroughly things of higher value. As for the Moleskine, I have faithfully been using it for my Hebrew study. The other Wal-mart Notebook, on the other hand, has in its cheap plastic spirals the shredded remains of roughly-torn lined pages, and its innards are moist from ill-treatment.

Tonight I was going to get an album off of iTunes. But I hesitated, and am still in that moment of hesitation. It is ten dollars.

Having been influenced by Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" in a class and also, The Lives of Saints, particularly St. Anthony's legendary biography, and also, the Catholic vow of poverty for the monks (which is still further problematic; All Christians and called to give all they have; not just the monks; also, Luke 18:22, James 2:14-17) I stumble increasingly as I decide between what is necessary and unnecessary; good and un-good, or not-as-good (I hesitate to use 'evil'). I cannot place this difficulty within the same spectrum of actual money-spending: just as there is an ethics involved in spending too much and thus fall into hedonism-selfishness, there is one that is related to that of parsimony, epitomized by Ebenezer Scrooge.

But what if I refuse to spend money on myself, for things I want, but for others, for what they need? (If I believed Singer with absolute certainty, I would put the complete law of Singer's conclusion on myself, which is impossible. I would have to cut drastically on the things that I buy yet again, even into the necessities and study materials. Thus, I proclaim myself a hypocrite in that sense. Still, we could all strive for that ideal.)

The ten dollars I spend for myself, for something silly, could instead help immeasurably more somewhere else. I would only be pretending to be loving my neighbor as I loved myself, if I had spent a mere 50 cents on him and 10 dollars for myself. (I realize the problem also in this statement, since it reduces and quantifies something like friendship, but, really, the "amount" we esteem others' is strongly correlated to how much we are both willing and actually do spend on them.)

So what should I do?

(Or perhaps, I missed the entire boat. Maybe God isn't calling us to give our possessions, but the thing that we hold dear the most. But then again, I am reluctant to"spiritualize" such things.)