Six Tips to Help Beat an Addiction to Impulse Spending

• Author: Bryan Miller
• Posted: 2024-09-25

The confluence of a pandemic and the approaching holiday season may have dire financial consequences for shopaholics. People have already been blowing their budgets while home during COVID-19 because online shopping has become incredibly easy and convenient. Even before the pandemic, 89% of Americans reported giving into the urge of impulse shopping. Many are finding themselves in a financial hole because they have overspent. However, you do not have to be hostage to an online shopping addiction. You can break out of it and become a better saver. Here are six tips to beat an online shopping addiction.

Admit That You Have a Problem

Like any addiction, the first thing that you need to do is admit that you have the problem. This means being honest with yourself about what you are dealing with and not denying reality. Admitting an addiction is an uncomfortable thing, and it requires getting your arms around some painful truths. Realizing that you have a problem is the first step taken towards fixing it. Many people will go through their entire life in denial. However, admitting the problem is like flipping a switch and starting the process to change your life.

Tell a Few People

While you do not need to get on social media and trumpet news of your addiction, sharing it with a handful of people whom you trust can be helpful. They can start to give you support for your problem. They might also be able to spot warning signs in the future knowing that you have a shopping addiction. While good friends and family are not here to run your life, they can hold you accountable for your issue by checking in on you with regularity. All you need to do is ask for their help.

Go Back and Look at Your Numbers

Knowing that you need to cut back, take a look at what you have been spending. Pull your last year of credit card statements to get a sense of exactly where you are spending your money. When you see your actual spending, the extent of your issue will become clear to you. Try to inventory each episode of impulse spending. While it may not be possible to remember what led up to each one, you might get a feeling of what causes this spending. Either way, looking at your spending in its totality will give you the best sense of the scope of your problem.

Try to Find Patterns

While you are looking over your spending, see if you can spot any patterns in your history. You may be able to identify a prompt or a trigger that causes you to overspend. Alternatively, you may realize that you do not overspend everywhere, but only in a certain area or two. For example, you may end up spending too much money on snacks when your own, putting a couple of dollars here and there on a credit card. This tends to add up pretty quickly and can inflate a credit card bill beyond what you thought.

Put Up Roadblocks to Keep You from Spending

Some experts would tell you to cut up all of your credit cards. They are simply not living on this planet. We cannot live without our credit cards. However, you can put up some systemic roadblocks to keep you from too much shopping in certain areas. For example, you can pay with cash at the gas station if you always end up putting extra money on your card for sodas and snacks. You could even delete your credit card number for Amazon so you have to manually enter in it, thereby slowing up your purchase process.

Think About How Your Problem Affects Others

The main people who suffer from your shopping addiction are your family. In human costs, you may need to forgo purchases that the rest of your family needs because of the debt. While you are entitled to spend for yourself, things become more difficult when impulse spending keeps the rest of the family from having things that they need. Beyond that, overspending can also harm friendships if your friends feel that they need to keep up with you and what you have by spending themselves. Like any addiction, a shopping addiction might affect those around you.

Note that not every instance of impulse spending means that you are an addict.