Part 1: Why Do You Shop? Self-Assessment
Most of us walk through life shopping and spending and never really understand why we do it. It is an unconscious decision that could be influence by any number of factors. Different people do it for different reasons, and understanding why you do what you do is the key to eventually changing those behaviors.
Take this self-assessment to figure out why you are spending money. By consciously taking control of your spending habits, you can make your Debt Diet plan a way of life, not just a temporary fix.
Look at the list of five statements below. Click on the one that best describes your mood when shopping.
- I am with my family or friends and having a good time
- I feel empty, alone, or like I need to buy something to make myself feel better
- I am wasting time and buy something just because it’s there
- I am thinking about something else and buy things I never planned on buying
- I get a rush and feel out of control, but I can’t stop myself
Entertainment
For many people, shopping is a social experience. You meet your friend at the mall in order to be together and you buy things together because that’s something else you can share.
How to Resist: Delay, delay, delay. Put a mandatory time limit on yourself before allowing yourself to purchase an item. You can put the items you want on hold and, if you’re still desperate to have them tomorrow, you can return to the store and buy them. Separating yourself from the purchase by time and distance will help you evaluate it more rationally.
Take gun stores as an example. A three day waiting limit is enforced to help prevent crimes of passion. It gives time for angry people to cool off and reevaluate their situation. Your shopping may not be a crime, but it could be a purchase of passion. So give yourself some time to cool off and decide if it’s really necessary
Mood Repair
Some people shop to fill the gap between who they are and who they want to be. You think your life will be better and you will be a different person if you own those shoes or that pair of pants. It won’t and you won’t.
How to Resist: Understand your particular motivation for buying. Is it becasue of a fight with your spouse? Is your scale telling you that you’re a few pounds heavier than last week? Did you just get a bonus and feel you deserve to splurge? Are you lonely and grateful for the seemingly sincere salesperson who wants to make you happy?
Psychologist April Benson gives her patients a laminated card with six questions on it to put in their wallet on top of their credit cards. Make one for yourself. The next time you head towards the register, ask yourself the following questions:
- Why am I here?
- How do I feel?
- Do I need this?
- What if I wait?
- How will I pay for it?
- Where will I put it?
You might discover that you no longer want to buy.
Habit
For many of us, shopping is a trained response – much like Pavlov’s dog. Our favorite store is in a convenient location and we drop by just to see what’s new. We don’t always know what we want to eat, so we buy a bunch of stuff that we think we might want to eat at some point in the future. Then we end up with a lot of stuff we didn’t plan on buying. And the Internet makes it easier than ever to check sales virtually as quickly as you can check your email.
How to Resist: Generally, there’s a chain of events that leads you to buy. If you always stop by the book store on your walk between your office and your car, you’ve taken a number of steps. You left the office. You turned left. You passed by the window of the book store, and noticed a number of new books in your favorite genre. You look at your watch and see you don’t have to be home for another 25 minutes and you stop in, where you inevitably buy something. What could you have done instead? You could have stayed in the office for another 15 minutes so that you really wouldn’t have time to shop. You could have parked in a different lot so that you would have to take a completely different path. You could have taken a right and headed to the library to borrow a book for free.
In order to resist, you must recognize your behavior patterns in detail so that you can change them.
Impulse
In this age of consumerism, modern stores understand that shopping is a conflict between desire and willpower. When your desire for things overwhelms your willpower, then you make an impulse purchase. And it often happens so fast, that you don’t even realize what you’ve done until you’re at home wondering when or where you’re ever going to wear a pink turtleneck sweater with the American flag applied in sequins.
How to Resist: You are most likely to buy on impulse when your ability to self-regulate has been depleted. You may be tired from a long day at work or maybe from the previous three hours of shopping. Or maybe you’re worried about your kids or work. Whatever type of stress it is, it can make you more prone to buy impulsively. You must monitor yourself. Don’t surf to your favorite website after you’ve had a glass of wine, a spat with your spouse or a hard day at work. And don’t visit stores when you know you’re not at your best.
Compulsive Behavior
The difference between impulse shopping and compulsive shopping is frequency. Impulse shopping happens when you occasionally find yourself faced with a purchase that’s too tough to resist. Compulsive shopping is when you find yourself feeling unable to stop shopping.
There are four basic types of compulsive shoppers:
- “Revenge addicts” shopin order to get back at another person – typically a spouse – with whom they cannot communicate in any other way.
- “Existential addicts” shop because the act of finding the right thing at the right price makes them feel important and gives their life meaning.
- “Serial addicts” are those who also have many other compulsive behaviors (like eating, drinking or drug abuse) and for whom compulsive shopping is just one more on the list.
- The fourth group shops to boost their mood. When preparing to buy, her mood increase steadily – her heart quickens, her palms sweat. When she makes her purchase, her mood plateaus, then quickly falls off. Soon thereafter her good feelings disappear and guilt sets in.
How to Resist: There is quick solution for compulsive behavior. You need to develop an emotional system that will help you tolerate distress in other areas of your lives. You also need help.
Some resources to consider:
- Debtors anonymous (www.debtorsanonymous.org). If there is no chapter in your area, try Gamblers Anonymous (www.gamblersanonymous.org). Although debt and gambling problems manifest themselves differently, they are actually fairly similar.
- You can also search for a therapist at the website www.PsychologyToday.org. To narrow the field, specify on the second pull-down menu that you’re searching for help with an addiction. Then ask the therapists that you call if they’ve helped other compulsive spenders.
Part 2: Protect Yourself and Start Saving Now
Now that you understand your spending issues, you can begin to save. In times of financial crisis, a savings stash can keep you from sliding back into debt. If an emergency arises, you you might be tempted to pay for it with your credit card, which will impede your progress. If you have a savings stash, you can avoid that pitfall. Savings is also the first step in preparing for the future so – once you get out of debt – you can end up rich (but that’s a subject for another article).
Turn Protection into Profit
- As you start to pay down your debts, put aside a portion of money each month and put it into savings – 3-5% is a good start but you eventually want 10%.
- Put your savings in a safe place, such as the highest paying money market account you can find (try www.bankrate.com to find the best rates). Do this until you have accumulated a substantial emergency cushion equal to 3 to 6 months salary. That’s your protection. If you get laid off or your car explodes, you’ll be able to live and pay your bills without falling back.
- Once that emergency cushion is in place, start investing that money in a portfolio that can help you build a foundation of wealth for your future.
Step 8 Summary
You can now stop spending money and begin saving by:
- understanding why you spend
- modifying your spending behaviors
- saving money to create an emergency cushion
- investing your savings and building a foundation for future wealth
Congratulations! That’s the end of Step 8.
You can learn more about how to get of debt by continuing to the next article, Getting Started on the Path to Debt-Free Living
0 comments ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment