Nov16
How to Avoid Emotional Spending
I will fully admit that I was a full-fledged, emotional spender. Upset, stressed or excited, I would always head to the mall for a bit of retail therapy. Unfortunately, most of my emotional purchases came back to bite me.
Those $150 red, high-heeled boots that I thought I absolutely had to have? Yep, they’re sitting at the bottom of my closet. I never did find anything to match them. But, I paid the price for many months as I struggled to pay them off.
I awarded myself with a cruise for my job promotion a few years ago. Unfortunately, the cruise cost more than my job promotion paid and I ended up with a hefty credit card bill that took the better part of two years to pay off.
What both of these purchases had in common were that, given the opportunity to do over, I would have not likely indulged in them. Classic emotional spending mistakes that I wish I could have taken back.
I have since learned the art of controlling my emotional spending by following three, simple rules:
- I keep all but one of my credit cards at home, locked in my safe. It’s a whole lot harder to make an emotional purchase if I have to travel home first to retrieve the credit card.
- I avoid my weak spots. I have an affinity for a certain little retail shop in the mall. If I don’t have the money to purchase anything, I simply don’t go there. In fact, I don’t even walk past it. It may sound simple, but many of our little “harmless” trips into our favorite stores end up costing us big.
I wait it out for at least 24 hours. I have learned to “sleep on” any large purchases. In other words, I check out the product, get a price and then head home to think it over for the night. After considering the cost, as well as the length of time it will take to pay it off, I often find myself passing on purchases that, just 24 hours earlier, I thought I absolutely must have.
