Top 4 ways to curb impulse spending

Hellloooo friend!

Wondering what to do when you feel those impulse urges creeping in? We hear you loud and clear.

First, impulse spending is NOT a personal failing.

There’s a whole psychology behind why we impulse spend, and marketers prey on those cognitive biases!

At the simplest level, we impulse buy because one of our highest needs includes spontaneity (along with other things like creativity, fulfillment, and more).

Also, we get a major dopamine hit.

Even when our logical brain sets goals like “don’t buy every sweatshirt you see this month,” our reward center overrides our logical brain when all the dopamine rushes in just before we score a nice 20% one-day only discount.

So, what do we do about it?

We gotta support our minds to allow the logical brain to make better real time spending decisions. Here’s the four things that have helped us most:

4️⃣ Ways to Curb Impulse Spending

1. Do a No Spend Challenge. ✂️ One of the reasons we love a NSC? It helps reset those dopamine receptor pathways by taking a break from instant gratification.

2. Identify what type of impulse spender you are. 🤔 We’ve identified the top 5: 

• Habit Spending: When buying becomes part of a habit loop, where a cue (time, location, preceding event, other people, etc.) activates a behavior (shopping) that results in a reward (dopamine).

• Shopping as an Activity: Spending happens out of boredom. It’s fun! 

• Stress Shopping: It’s common to shop when we’re stressed because it’s something we can control and it’s a great distraction from our problems. 

• Social Influence: We want what other people have, and with social media, we’re always reminded what we might be missing out on.

• The Hunt: Finding a good deal is the modern-day version of hunting our own dinners. But arbitrary discounts and deals are designed to make us overvalue products, and they’re usually fake deals that don’t actually save you any money.

3. Make a list of alternatives. 📝 This list should be connected to the type of impulse buying you do. Some quick tips for each type: 

• Habit Spenders: Avoid the cue. If you’re stopping at the local bakery because you can’t resist the smell on your morning walk every day, take a different route for a while. 

• Activity Shoppers: Try a new hobby.  Seek out other ways to not be bored. 

• Stress Shoppers: Find healthy emotion-focused coping strategies. Maybe that’s therapy, or something you can do on your own like exercise, meditate, or test out a new self-care activity.

• Socially Influenced Spenders: Limit sources of influence (like unfollowing social media influencers) and/or test out the 48-hour rule. If you want to buy something, write it on an “Impulse List.” If you’re still thinking about it 48-hours later, consider if it’s filling a need and if you’ll use it enough to justify the cost. 

• Hunters This is more of an anti-action step, but be critical of anything that looks or sounds like a deal! Try a new mantra: “getting a good deal is no longer a badge of honor.”

4. Track your transactions and net worth. 📈 The more we pay attention to our spending patterns, the easier it is to identify the extent to which impulsive spending is popping up. We like using Monarch. It’s an easy budgeting app and allows you to see all your accounts in one place. And through 2/28, get 50% off your first year with code NEWYEAR2025! **

Til Friday,
Misti

⭐️⭐️ P.S. Want to share all this goodness with your friends AND earn cool Frugal Friends merch?

**Means this is a sponsored or affiliate section. We may earn a small fee or commission when you choose to try one of our sponsor or affiliate partners. But opinions are still 1000% our own.