Unplanned purchases can be caused by both external circumstances and internal irrational motives. If a person is reluctant to make a purchase under pressure of circumstances, then impulsive buying brings enjoyment. However, later positive emotions may change to disappointment. And being chronic, impulsive shopping can create a serious hole in the budget. Find out how to protect yourself from this passion so that it does not disturb your financial well-being.
Planned, Forced, and Impulsive Purchases — What’s the Difference?
- Planned purchases are those that you recognized and allocated a certain part of the budget for their acquisition. For example, you have long dreamed of changing the curtains in the living room and decided that by the new spring, you will definitely do it.
- Forced purchases can be the result of unexpected events. For example, some essential equipment has broken down and cannot be repaired, or relatives are coming to stay for a long time, and you need to buy another bed to accommodate them. If you don’t have a budget for such purchases, you can quickly get a short-term loan using the matching services of the Payday Depot Since payday loans are not big, you can easily pay them back with your next paycheck.
- Impulse purchases are not necessary and for which you did not prepare in advance. A person acquires them under an influx of emotions. These can be both positive emotions, a kind of euphoria, and negative ones. In the second case, the purchase serves as a means to balance them or relieve stress.
Impulsive Consumption Behavior and Finance
Impulse purchases can restore a person’s psychological balance, but the imbalance can be transferred to their finances:
- If you spend a lot on unplanned purchases, this may negatively affect the purchase of planned ones.
- If you have a long-term goal, achieving it will be delayed in time.
- If you make purchases on a credit card, you may be accumulating debt, making it more difficult to pay off.
How to Break the Vicious Cycle of Impulsive Buying
If you make unplanned purchases infrequently and don’t spend a lot of money on them, you don’t have to worry about it. However, if you regularly find yourself buying things you didn’t plan on and don’t really need, you might want to think about ways to improve your impulse control.
Learn to Recognize Triggers
Keep a diary in which you will write down under the influence of what emotion you made an unnecessary purchase. This way, you will begin to better understand your behavior, and when such an emotion again pushes you to buy something, try to mitigate it in a different way. For example, go for a run, take a walk in the park, or simply postpone the purchase until the next day.
Get Advice from Others
Make it a rule not to make purchases without consulting with your partner, relatives, or friends. The other person is free from your impulse and will give you an objective reflection of your behavior. Their advice will help you understand whether a given purchase is the result of necessity or impulse.
The state of your finances is the best indicator of the rationality of your behavior. And if they begin to decrease unpredictably, this is an incentive to look for irrational patterns of consumer behavior, bring them to light, and learn to control them.
