Impulse Buying and How to Control It

What is Impulse Buying?

Impulse buying is the process of buying goods or services based on your emotional state and mostly for the release of endorphins it creates. When it’s considered impulse buying, it’s usually buying for “wants” as opposed to “needs”. Often times these purchases are unnecessary and purely based on your emotional state and the good feeling you get from it.

Playing the Waiting Game

Waiting to make a purchase is a great way to help hamper impulse buying and the desire to make unnecessary purchases. Often times, just by waiting and coming back to a purchase later, you realize that you did not need to make the purchase in the first place and were simply acting based on your emotional state at the time. Patience provides clarity and when you put time and distance between your purchases you can see that some might not be necessary and could potentially be a waste of resources. Now, this doesn’t mean don’t consume or don’t make any purchases but this general tactic could be very useful at helping use consume less and save more. Allowing our finances to flourish and prosper in the long term.

Strategy: Setting a Waiting Period to Buy

Fundamentally, if you can set a period of time to wait and then make a purchase after that time period has expired, you’ll be able to greatly reduce your consumption and control impulse buying. It doesn’t have to be a specific time limit but one you can adjust as you get better at the game. Consider starting with a 1 hour waiting period and then you could go as long as 1 week. Eventually the waiting period will dissuade you from even remembering you wanted to make a purchase in the first place.

Wait and Forget About It

The goal should be to almost “forget” about what you even wanted to purchase in the first place, because if it was truly important it would’ve stuck with you.

Anytime you give a purchase time and tell yourself you’ll come back to it you are fostering better spending habits. This tactic shouldn’t be used for purchases that are considered “needs” but it’s definitely a habit that can help lead to all around better spending habits. Since when you add time to the equation it can often make you realize that the purchase might not have been necessary in the first place. And a lot of times, it really isn’t.

Getting a Better Handle On Our Emotional State

Besides just utilizing the waiting game you can also look to try to gain better control of your emotional state. That might be easier said than done since emotional states are not always something that you can easily control. However, if you are more mindful with your finances and your phone scrolling and online shopping, you can get a better handle on your emotional state little by little. It won't be an overnight process but something that occurs gradually by practicing patience and mindfulness.

These practices an help you be more mindful, more deliberate with your purchases and help you thwart impulse buying from ruining your budget and finances.