by David B Hitchcock

Created on: December 12, 2010

Avoiding impulse spending

When did it become the cool thing to buy something the moment you see it? Teenage girls in the mall see a new dress and “have to have it right now”. Teenage boys in the mall see the latest video game and “will die if I don’t get that right now”. Mom and Dad even suffer from this problem when they see a shiny new car or truck. At some point in the last decade or two we have been programmed that impulse spending is the best thing we can do to make ourselves happy.

You can’t buy happiness. You hear those words from time to time, but does it really sink in? Do you really believe them? If you did, would you be walking home with that 55” LCD TV that you spent more on than your retirement fund? Or would you spend more on your child’s running shoes that on a week’s groceries? Then again even groceries can include impulse spending when you buy that bag of cookies you saw on TV, or the frozen pizza that tastes like delivery.

Why do we spend impulsively? Some people do it to feel good about themselves. Others do it because their friends pressure them into it. Yet others just want to one up their friends. And still others buy things because the TV or radio told them these products were great. None of these are good reasons to buy things. If you think back to farmers heading west on covered wagons, they only bought the essentials and went for weeks or months without buying anything. Did they survive? Sure they did! Are there people like that today? There sure are people like that still today that live off by themselves and only come into two a few times a year to buy things they really need. Think of that song by Steve Earl – Copperhead Road where the old guy would only come to town about twice a year.

So, we don’t need to buy things impulsively. We know most of the reasons why we impulsively buy things. The big question is what to do about it. If you aren’t buying more than you can afford, and you are still paying your bills like rent, electricity, food, and so on then its not really a problem. However you don’t need an 8 pair of shoes a day habit to be able to benefit from putting the stop on impulse spending.

To kick the habit the first thing you need to do is leave all your credit cards at home. Credit cards allow you to run out and buy anything you want right now rather than force you to save up to buy things like your parents and grandparents used to. Without credit

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