The immediate reaction I get when I tell people about this goal—and I call it a goal because I don’t always live up to it—is that $150 is a lot to spend for a piece of clothing.

That’s especially true if your standard for pricing is a store like Primark, the insanely cheap Irish fast-fashion chain that recently opened its first U.S. location. For designer fashion, where a t-shirt can easily clear $150, it’s actually a pretty low hurdle.

But it’s enough that it causes me to seriously hesitate, which is the real point. It forces me to think about just how much I want that item of clothing, how much I’ll wear it, and whether I think the value it offers is worth a significant cost.

Importantly, $150 is also enough that I can’t make these purchases all the time, at least not without sacrificing elsewhere or going broke. It’s an investment, rather than the cheap buzz of getting something new.

Now, not everyone should have the same dollar limit. Each person should determine a standard based on income and other financial responsibilities. But it should be just enough that it causes you to wince slightly. My limit—as a married, childless, working journalist, saving up to one day buy an apartment—might fall somewhere between that of a single parent on an hourly wage and that of a high roller like author Buzz Bissinger, who wrote of his addiction to Gucci in GQ. (If you’re shopping like Bissinger, though, setting a dollar floor isn’t going to solve anything.)

But the process for all of us, whether we’re shopping at Forever 21 or Prada, is psychologically similar. Researchers have found that the insula—the part of the brain that registers pain—plays a role in purchase decisions. Our brain weighs the pleasure of acquiring against the pain of paying. As clothing prices decline, that pain does too, making shopping easy entertainment, disconnecting it from our actual clothing needs. It’s something I think of whenever I stumble on the haul videos that have blown up on YouTube in the last few years.

To restore that balance, the price of the clothing we consider purchasing should be high enough that it “hurts” at least a little—and for me, around $150 fulfills that requirement.

So the striped, cotton Dries Van Noten sweater I bought in July came in at $200. I deliberated for some time on that one as I walked around the store.

Last winter, my mid-weight jacket from the Japanese label Sage de Cret cost $200, and prompted some soul-searching as I tried to decide how much I really wanted and needed it. I ended up selling an Ann Demeulemeester jacket that didn’t fit quite right to make up for it.

Last fall, I spent more than a week deciding whether to buy a grungy patchwork shirt from Takahiro Miyashita’s label, The Soloist, since it was an online sale and offered no returns. But even at more than $200, it has been well worth it. The amount of thought and detail that went into the shirt impresses me every time I put it on.