Five Reasons You Impulse Shop (& How to Resist!)

Published Dec 10, 2024, 7:00 AM

No judgments here—we’re all guilty of impulse spending from time to time anyways. But it becomes a problem when we don’t notice how it’s slowly draining our wallets. In this episode, Jen and Jill explore five reasons behind impulse spending and offer better alternatives that won’t cost us.

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Episode four sixty six, Five Reasons you impulse shop and how to resist.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about the root causes of impulse buying, which is very timely for the season that we are in.

It's not an exhaustive list, but it is the top five reasons. It's the most common of the list, and so we imagine that you'll probably find yourself somewhere within these five, maybe a couple of them. But we've realized that if you can identify what your kind of spending crypto night is, then you can be better equipped to respond to it and kind of nip it in the bud, so to speak. Not that we will never ever again impulse buy, but if we can understand ourselves better, the way that we tick, the ways in which we impulse shop, then we're not just throwing spaghetti at a wall and see in what sticks. We can be really pointed with our efforts of finding new patterns and just choosing more beneficial ways with our money.

Yeah, and I love that we're doing it right now, because this is a great This is the time when every single one of these will be at play and you'll get to learn a lot about yourself in a short period of time, the root causes of why you impulse spend, and we hope you'll look at it in a non judgmental light and this episode will just help you learn more about yourself, plan for these things and do better in the near future or in January.

But first, this episode is brought to you by things you can't resist. You don't want to like hot chocolate on a cold day, the urge to sneeze, the desire to google every medical symptom you ever have, picking up tongs and clicking them together the second through tenth and beyond chip. There are things in life that are simply irresistible, so you might as well just give in, kind of like pre ordering our book by what you love without going broke. If you're not going to stifle the sneeze or keep the tong silent, don't even bother waiting on this book either. It's a game changer and it will help you manage money better. Spend better for the rest of your literal life by what you Love book dot com. Actually, we also talk about these reasons for impulse spending in the book.

This episode is content straight from our book. If you've never listened to the show before, we go google topics and then we'll take results on the first page and we'll go through them and tell you what's fluff, what's playing the algorithm, and what is actually real life. But this particular episode, we are taking what we have learned about impulse spending, what we put in our book, and we're going to give you a primer on it as you await your copy of Buy What you Love to come in the mail. And if impulse shopping is something that you have found you really need to get a handle on. Again, we're not against all impulse shopping. You won't be able to plan every single purchase you make every day, right, That's what impulse buying is. It's unplanned spending. But if you feel like yours has gotten out of control, then we have a lot of episodes for you to queue up after this one, like episode four thirty four Ways online stores get you to impulse buy. So we talk about marketing in that one and episode three seventy eight cycle logical reasons why we impulse by so we go a little bit more deeper into the psychology and kind of brain stuff. If you're like a science geek. I love that one. So let's get into the first reason. And I think this might be my top one. It's why I put it first. Maybe it's not yours, but for me, habit spending. So this is just mindless spending, the spending that maybe at once did have a purpose, but time has gone on to where it's just become habit, and now you're spending unplanned over and over without fulfilling the original reason that that spending may have done it. And the reason I say that specifically as we talk about our friend page, you might know our overcoming over spending on TikTok and Instagram. She's a good friend and we interviewed her for the book, and her story is that she had a job right out of college and she started buying stuff for her new corporate job, a new wardrobe, shoes, you know, all the things, and she got into the job and realized she didn't love it, and so then she started continuing on with this habit of buying to escape the job. And so she went on this journey to not just get at the root cause, because the root cause was her job. But she couldn't fix that overnight. But there were things that she could do to fix the problem overnight in the meantime.

And so we go.

We want to talk about root cause, but we also want to talk about in the gap between identifying and actually solving the root cause. There's a lot you can do.

So if this one is you, it's important to be able to identify ways to interrupt that habit we talk about Q craving reward. This obviously is not our idea. Is the habit loop. Plenty of books around atomic habits, the power of habit, It's all there. Yeah, And so what we ultimately want to identify is what is the queue. Sometimes that can be location related, time of day, Certain experiences become the queue, which then incite the craving, which then causes the action and the reward that we get from the thing. And if we can catch habits at the queue and shift whatever that is, find new habits ways of relating, then we don't find ourselves in the coffee line or making these kind of mindless purchases, you know. So if it is, let's say, scrolling on your phone at night and you are one click buying your shopping, then changing up whatever that queue is. So maybe it's shifting just being on your phone at night, or maybe it's changing the immediate apps that you go to on your phone, putting different blockers in place to be able to go play a game instead of scrolling Amazon or even Instagram. If that's the thing that's causing you to want to buy whatever influencers are pedaling that evening.

Yeah, one of my big things that I talk about in the book is ending up in the Starbucks drive through. For me, that's always been a struggle, Like when I was in college and I was heading to like my bartending job that I didn't love, or after I had my babies and I was just trying to get out of the house, I always like revert to ending up in the drive through line of some coffee shop. And at first these were legitimate things, like a month after I had a baby, going escaping just to get a coffee was.

A true treat privilege. Loved it.

But as my children grew up, it became less of an escape and more of a habit. So I had to look through my ninety day transaction inventory and identify that that actually had become a habit versus an escape and a treat. So what I figured out is that it was it was a combination of cues, right, So if it was, it could have been like preceding events, so like my husband gets home from work and I'm like out the door the preceding event of him getting home, or time of day like when I was heading to work in college. So those are the things you kind of have to look for, and the ninety day transaction inventory will really help you kind of pinpoint those cues because you can copy and paste all your transactions into a spreadsheet. You can sort it by day that you made it, so you can see different times. You can sort it by retailer, so if you're seeing, like, you know, ten Starbucks transactions in a row, once you've sorted it by retailer, and then you can also maybe see a connection in the time of day that those transactions were made. So it just it can tell you a lot. So when I figured that out, I was then able to put into place different things to treat myself that didn't cost money. So I invested in At first, I invested in a pour over coffee thing and that just didn't work for me, So it's fine, I can sell it. And then I got my single serve, you know, my ninja coffee bar that worked better for me. And now I get the really nice flavored coffee. So I had to also figure out what worked for me that would incentivize me to choose the low cost option over Starbucks.

And helpful caveat here you did kind of explain it a little bit. But for those of you who the ninety day transaction inventory is a new phrase to you, it is something that we talk about in the book. We actually as a free resource along with the book when you purchase it that we do have a ninety day transaction inventory walkthrough, So another reason to pre order that book by what youolovebook dot com. But we talk about compiling all of your purchases over the last ninety days into one spreadsheet because ninety days three months will give you a pretty good sense of what you're spending money on a snapshot, because month to month things change, but that's a really good clump of time that you can then look at where am I spending money, and it will usually rise to the surface what type of impulse spender you primarily are. So that's a reason to kind of do this ahead of time, or to be able to find out even what kind of impulse spender am I. So the second one here that I will point out is stress. Stress can be a big reason that we impulse buy and we will always in forever face stress. This will not go away. So understanding kind of our stress response and whether or not it is linked to buying things that we weren't intending to buy, will be really helpful for the rest of our lives. I will also add well, first of all, stress isn't entirely bad either. There's a spectrum of stress. Technically, we are stressed when we're excited, our levels elevate, but we can also experience all sorts of other emotions that could cause us to impulse by like happiness, celebration, or sadness exactly, there's a lot of just emotions that could lead us to want to spend.

Anticipation like looking forward to something.

Yeah oh man, ahead of a vacation, we spend so many of us spend so much more thinking that we need to buy the things for that trip. So this would just involve looking at when you're looking at that ninety day transaction inventory if you can remember, and you won't remember for every single line item, but what was the emotions surrounding this, What maybe had happened that day that led to this spending. And you may find a pattern that, yeah, when I have a really rough day at work, I tend to spend more, or some really exciting things happened, or I was hanging out with my friends a lot, and that I was having a ton of fun, and so that led to me spending maybe more than I had intended to. And so with any of these, it's not about just cutting it out right. If we could just stop, then this podcast episode would have been done before it started, but replacing it finding alternatives. So one of the things that I love to recommend with this is to create a list of things to do when you're feeling various emotions, because a lot of times we'll just reach for the closest thing or the thing that worked for us last time, and it might be like fitting a square peg into a round hole, where that's not the thing that works for us anymore because last time we did that, and it did meet a relational need, but this time it's an emotional or a mental need, and so I need something different. So some of this then requires us to even list out mental, physical, emotional, relational. What are some common needs that come up for you or common emotions that you might feel, and what might be something that could meet the needs? And this is almost like a dopamine hit list that when we are looking for that thing, because usually that's what it is when we're feeling various types of emotions, we're looking for that high that even the anticipation of spending can bring to us. And so that's important to recognize. We don't have to avoid dopamine. We can just find other ways to get it in ways that are actually going to meet our needs. So if we are able to identify, you know what, what I'm feeling right now is actually loneliness. So maybe I call up a friend, or I write a card to a loved one, I plan an opportunity to get together and do a potluck with people. These could be the actions to go along with a relational need. Maybe I'm feeling really sad, but instead of spending, what else could I do? What kind of lifts my spirits. For me, I know that some fun throwback music can really help me when I'm feeling down or trying a new recipe, Cooking something that I enjoy can be an alternative to me and give me some of that that dopamine that I might be looking for instead of buying something where inevitably it doesn't actually meet the need.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing with stress is that we want to hit the cortisol at the root, right, And so we studied kind of what in the you know, what actions can we do to really dissipate that cortisol that is heightened by stress. And so the two best things that we found, and this is based on studies that we read, are exercise and meditation. So creating some kind of room for consistent exercise, whatever that looks like for you, and then also consistent meditation. This does not have to be every day. Don't want to add things to your already full list of things to do, right, We almost want to take a subtractive approach versus an additive. But I think incorporating these two things in whatever way feels right. Like what I said when I was looking for a way to get coffee that was more appealing than Starbucks. I didn't get it right the first time. I did all this research and I was like, this is the way I'm going to go, and it just didn't work for me. But I got it right the second time. So you're going to have to play around with these things, but know that meditation and exercise are effective in solving the cortisol problem that is, you know, leading to stress shopping. And another thing that I got an email from a listener once when we were talking about stress shopping, and I had mentioned control is a big reason why we stress shop. And she felt so seen by this, and she gave this great example. So a lot of the reasons why we stress shop is because things are happening outside of our control that are stressing us out right. So we want to hit the cortisol, but we also want to recognize that we can't control that instead of grasping onto something else that we can control, like shopping. And so what she said is when she felt stressed, she just got this thing in her head that, oh, my gosh, winters three months away, my kids need coats, And she immediately went out and bought coats without consulting sales without looking secondhand, without doing all the due diligence, just because she was stressed. Things were out of her control and she latched onto one thing she could have control over. And that's not bad. But we just want to recognize our need for control and choose something that's healthier we can control, kind of like controlling our exercise and our meditative activities. So third is shopping as an activity. And so when Jill was talking about sometimes the root cause of you know, some of our problems loneliness, and so how can we meet that? And we sometimes will invite friends to shop with us, and this is how we kind of meet that need. But there are all kinds of like shopping as an activity things. I think when I was growing up, we didn't have hobbies or sports, really we had shopping. We went shopping every weekend, whether it was a big box store or an outlet mall or even a farm. So in adulthood that led into like farmers' markets and all kinds of things like other things for me, So figuring out what can I do was an activity that does not cause me to spend money? And also what am I trying to get? Really with that shopping as an activity. For Page, her spending was both habit and activity, and I really think it merged from necessity, merged into activity, and then went into habit. So how can we figure that out? For Page, she just replaced the activity. She didn't deny herself because she still wanted to escape that job that she didn't like while she was looking for a new job. So instead she would take her lunch to the park and she would sit in her tree in nice weather and just enjoy the outdoors. And so it was still doing an activity, but just that activity wasn't shopping.

Yeah, this is something I talked about in the book as well, that before Eric and I moved into our RV, living in very normal sized apartments, and I really loved to go to yard sales and thrift stores. I mean I still do, but you'll see why it had to shift in a second. So this was something that we just did on the weekends. We didn't have a ton of money, but we could afford things at yard sales and thrift stores, and so it was something just fun to do. It was what we did on the weekends and collect these things for less than five dollars. But then when we moved into our RV, I quickly learned that this can't sustain itself. I had to already do a big purge of things to downsize into living in a vehicle. And initially I did still go to the yard sales and the thrift stores, but it didn't feel as fun to me because I couldn't actually bring anything home, and when I did, well, where am I going to put this? What am I going to do with this? I don't have this amount of space for things, And so I was forced in many ways to then look for something different. So I did begin it a little bit more begrudgingly, a little less on purpose. But I think it helped me to realize, oh, that wasn't actually really fulfilling me in the ways in which I thought it was. It was fun, I did enjoy it, but when I couldn't actually purchase anything, then I realized that the things I purchased were just junk that I ended up needing to sell or give away. Then what am I left with? And finding alternatives to do on the weekends, which literally did lead us to hosting more. Even though we lived in an RV, it was still very fun to have people over for bonfires, or we went on more hikes. We also had a lot less to clean, so it freed up a whole lot more time to connect with people, which is really the main thing that we love doing, and that has stuck now because I was forced into finding alternatives, and I then was able to realize, I actually don't love that thing as much as I thought that I did. I do love these other things of hanging out with friends and finding free activities to do together. So I'm grateful for that kind of shove that I got. So maybe not quite as easy to implement this if you're not downsizing to a vehicle. But the encouragement here is that when you do try out different things, you might find something even better. And in that way, it's not deprivation, it's just learning more about yourself and finding new things you love. Yeah.

So the solution to this, I really love what Jill was saying. She took her activity and replaced it with a different activity. But not every shopping as an well say activity okay, large activity out of the home activity right, going thrifting and garage sailing. Replaced it with an activity of equal size going hiking, bonfire, but not every shopping as an activity is that big. If I'm scrolling Amazon in bed and buying stuff impulsively, getting out and going for a run is not an equal activity to replace with, right, Even though exercise is good, it's just not the same. So we break down small, medium, and large activities of shopping and corresponding things you could try to replace them with of small, medium, and large size, so we don't have time to go into all of them. But that is a really important distinction that I want to make when solving the shopping as an activity problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has to meet it has to be grew in. The next thing on here is the thrill of the hunt, and this one is also me hi hi. I do enjoy shopping as an activity, and boy do I love the thrill of the hunt. Those red tags, yellow tags, really any color tag that mean that the price is lower than the original price. I am here for it. And if I had to dig, if I had to elbow my way through mounds of clothing to find the gem, I feel so great. That is a dopamine rush for me. I feel smart, I feel like a huntress. I feel on top of the world, and boy do I also love to brag to my friends about the deals that I got. I started to get these reels from people, like on Instagram of the people going through their home and talking about how I got this for free and I got that for two ninety nine, and like they're like, this is you jell me? Oh boy, I do have a problem.

A speaking event and somebody came up to me it was like.

I got the shirt for two ninety nine.

And I was like a person personally, I'm not there, this isn't mine, and I'm like, I don't care.

I mean, I'm not here for cheap stuff and I'm not here to take advantage of labor by any means. But when I get things secondhand and I know what they might have cost full price, brand new, it's very thrilling. And you know what, I'm just gonna say it, I don't think you're ever gonna take the thrill of a deal away from me. If I know it's a true deal, I'm loving it. But nothing is a deal if you don't actually need it. And just getting things for lower prices can leave us with a house full of stuff that now we just have to dust. And so one of the things kind of along with my downsizing, because that was part of it. For me. It was both shopping as an activity and the thrill of the hunt because thrift stores you got to dig. At yard sales, you're digging there too. It's all it's all a hunt, And so I also then had to find other things to replace this. I think that there is something really primal, if I can say it in that way, in a lot of us. It probably is related to being hunters and gatherers that we want we want to look for things, we want to find them. We want to pull the gem up out of the soil and claim it as ours and be so proud of ourselves. But that can't be every single time, and it can't be mindlessly when it comes to our money. But we can hunt for other things. There are other ways that we can kind of create this search and challenge for ourselves and a feeling of accomplishment, and that can take on the form of setting new goals for ourselves that we can challenge ourselves with, whether it's setting a new reading goal, or picking up a new hobby or re engaging with an old hobby, or trying new recipes. I know I mentioned that one already because it is something that I really enjoy creating these challenges so that we can then accomplish them and experience the high that comes with that. You. Jen also mentioned something on another podcast that I love hunting at the library, which I really do. I haven't tried this one, but I do think it would work for me going somewhere like a library where the things there are free, but you get to hunt around for the thing that you're looking for. So I'll take cooking again as an example. Let's say you want to look for a new recipe, head to the cooking section and hunt, not just look, hunt for a book that looks it's really interesting to you and maybe shows a skill set that you haven't tried before. Rent that puppy out. You can also ask the library for what other types of things they rent out the library.

You all know this.

They do not only rent books. It's not just about books at the library. They rent resources of all sorts. Music, they rent out museum tickets, local stuff that's happening in your area. So treat the library like your own little little kit discount. Yeah, there's so much happening.

It's fantastic, And I would say My charge also is to it's kind of like an anti solution. Anti alternative is to stop getting the deals. Deals are tools, not trophies. So being proud of a deal is it's a marketing tactic that businesses use. Would not do sales if it was not proven to get you to impulse buy more. And we talk about an exact story of j C. Penny and this crazy story about how people stop.

When j C.

Penny stopped doing sales and just lowered their prices, people stopped shopping there, and when they raised the prices and brought back the deals, they started again. And it is insane.

So I would also.

Challenge you to just shop apart from deals and maybe detox yourself off of that.

Yes, yes, and deals are tools.

Yes, Yes, I love.

That perspective and that's so so helpful. I also will say that I think something that comes along with knowing ourselves identifying our impulse spending, It doesn't mean that we have to totally abandon an enjoyment of making our money go further. So, yes, I love deals, but I'm not impulse shopping them anymore. It has more so led to patience, knowing what I want, keeping a list, and then I am able to take advantage of the deal. So I still love them. I can still recognize that many are marketing employees. But for instance, just this week, we've been in need of a new door that's hurricane glass, an exterior door. Eric found one on clearance, an original sixty five hundred dollars door, and we got it for a thousand so like, and that's not a marketing ploy that's home depot who had a return sitting on their shelf for three months that nobody else wanted to buy. And we've been checking back on this door weekly for months now. I am glad that this is over because this has taken up too much of our time. Eric's been like obsessed with this door because we were able to kind of hold it with an open hand, keep an eye on it, keep talking to the manager. We got it for what kind of discount is that eighty percent less than like its actual sticker price. So things like that do exist, but you're not going to just get that on a whim. Those types of things happen when you know what it is that you need. You are setting some money aside, you're implementing some patience on it, you are looking and sometimes sometimes it goes your way. Yeah, So that's that's my that's my other side.

I'm with you one hundred percent. I'm with you on doing it that way because we are the same, we are becoming the same We're becoming the same person. It's becoming a problem, all right. So the last one we will talk about is social influence. So this is something that I'm not necessarily social influence in being traditionally influenced by user generated content.

So we.

Have really seen this trend towards aesthetic and perfectionism, like in social media, having these having this aspirational content and or even non aspirational content just generalize content in a really aesthetic vibe, and that has led to people trying to recreate it or feeling inadequate and not bringing people into their home because they believe all they're seeing is these really aesthetic homes on social media and they believe their home is inadequate. And we have found that is leading to a lot more impulse spending than somebody doing an unboxing video or a paid ad that is clearly you know, they're just hawking products for money, right, So this is something that's much deeper for me during our home renovation.

We lived in.

A live in flip for two years, and I followed a lot of interior designers because I'm not an interior designer by nature, I don't know.

What looks good.

Uh.

And the problem was is that these people have these these funds to do this because it's their job, right, and then they know what to do.

I was looking.

I did not have the funds that they have because it is not my job or my gift. And if I'm trying to recreate this in a way that is affordable for me, just not identical to them. How do I know when it's done? How do I know when it's enough? And I could just keep buying and buying and buying, trying to recreate all these different influencers, you know, tips. But at the end of the day, I had to decide when my house was decorated and done and also be patient and know that it's done for now. And if I see this one thing, then I could add that, but like that's finite. It's not like for the rest of my life I'll just see things and be like, oh, that looks good, I'll add that.

I have to know what it is.

Yeah, Oh, that's interesting. I feel like it kind of ties in with a bit of the habit spending loosely, in that we may start following an account for a certain season to help us in that season, and then we keep following them, but now it's no longer serving us. It's just making us more envious or thinking that what we have isn't enough. And we also have to keep redecorating, re renovating, redoing rather than calling it this is a good representation of me. I'm done. I no longer need to be buying these things anymore. I know we experienced that in the midst of our renovation too. We were so used to just dropping all this cash that we had set aside for the renovation every weekend, going too Low's and Home Depot, and then suddenly, when no, we are done, the big parts of the renovation are over. We really had to identify when that hard stop was, when no, now this is no longer a need for the renovation anymore. We can be patient for the finishing touches that now need to happen. Yeah. I think social influence can play into that.

Same thing happened was closed for me after I had my second child, and I was dressing this new postpartum body and I wanted to feel good about myself. That was a good thing for that season. But then I had to once I had bought a few new pieces, I had to stop and say, like, Okay, the rest of this, I'm going to wait until I find something second hand or something you know, Poshmark whatever through the storm. So yeah, setting that it is such a balance. Rights That's why we say, for me, impulse spending is never going to go away, because I have this list in the back of my mind of things that I'm willing to buy unplanned if I see it available secondhand or as a deal. But if it's not on the list, it's not it's not getting bought.

Yeah. Yeah, And I think that's a good call for curating who you follow. It's a good reason to take inventory regularly, maybe every few months. Is this still helping me? Or is this maybe making me feel discontent like what I have isn't enough, maybe prompting me to spend more than I want. But also this happens in our own communities as well. We see what our neighbors have, we see what our friends have, and maybe they're not living in this beautifully curated esthetic, but we could see the things that they have that are maybe making their lives a little bit more efficient, and we want that thing too. And that comes down to really understanding our own values and our own goals with money so that we can say better, yes is easier, knows to these things, that the purchasing opportunities that we are presented with every single day, that social influence will always be all around us, but we will feel more confident in what we say yes to when we know what we want to be doing with our money.

You know one thing I want to be doing with my time.

Yeah, that I do every week, and I do it intentionally.

The bill of the week.

That's right, it's time for the best minute of yourance entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Tough bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clayton, this is the bill of the week.

Hi, jen unjil, This is Holly from Saint George, Utah, and I just wanted to share my really exciting bill of the week. So we got the notice that our car insurance was going to be auto renewing a week or so, and it was really expensive, and so I started just shopping around for different insurances and by just spending a couple of hours looking around, I was able to switch car insurances and save my husband and I over six hundred dollars. So that is my bill of the week.

Thank you.

Yes, Holly, this is your reminder out there if you have not shopped your car insurance this year, it's time. It's time to do it. Do it this month and see what else is out there. They will pro rate.

And yeah, just do it.

Yeah, you don't have to wait until your insurance renews. Is something you can do anytime of the year and compare and like you said, you know, even get some money back even if you've paid in advance. One of the resources that we have that we would recommend for being able to do this even faster is Policygenius, So Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Policy Genius will help you to be able to compare different insurance prices. So thank you so much, Holly. What a great reminder. If you all are listening to this bill and you have a bill about shopping around, negotiating lowering your bills or a bill you don't mind paying, or your your bill who pays his bills, your bill who doesn't pay his billills you just bill live in your bill life.

Or maybe you want more bills to be able to make an impulse buy. Go get less expensive auto insurance and use the money you saved to buy yourself something.

Nice Wow for goal friendspodcast dot com, slash bill, leave us your bill, and now it's time for the lightning around.

All right, When do you allow yourself to make impulse purchases? This is our vulnerability round.

I think.

So we've been quite transparent in the fact that we make impulse purchases. There is no room for planning one hundred percent of your purchases, which is why we don't love traditional budgets. We definitely have our own way of budgeting or as we say, making a spending plan, which we talk about in the book. So I would say again, the list, and I know you're gonna do it, Okay, I say it. I have the things in the back of my head that I know I will spend money on if the opportunity rises.

The list is short, it's very.

Short, and I keep it short so that I can change, like I can reconsider if something should even be on the list. I will keep wish lists on Amazon for things for a very long time and wait for them to go on sale. But very often sales on Amazon are not real. It's usually a price increase to show a decrease. So yeah, it has. And that's one of the there's been such a rise in deceptive sales marketing that and I read about it so much that now sales infuriate me. And that's one of the reasons that I just don't like sales. But I do wait if I can get a deal. I know I can get a deal, I will wait. So yeah, I just it's my list.

Yeah. For me, there's a couple of things that that converge with my impulse spending, and the first is similarly my list. I do have to write it down. My brain just doesn't doesn't work the way I want it to. And I just pulled it up right now to see, Okay, what do I have on the list? A TV console table. This has been on the list for years. I don't think I'm finding it. I should probably, And the reason I'm not erasing it is because I actually have the measurements. So that's something else I'll do, Like if there's a piece of furniture that I want, I will put the measurements in the note for like what could fit there. So if I am out at a thrift storeyard sale, or you know me, and I find something, we also keep a tape measurer in our vehicle that I can make sure that that thing would would fit for what I'm looking for. I haven't found one. We've lived without it for years, so I don't know if we're doing.

I got Travis a tape measure keychain for that very reason.

Yup, you always need one. Black boots and these have been on my list for also over a year, in part because I really like the black boots I already have, but the heel, the like coating on the heel is all like flaking off, And so there is a part of me like I've been on the hunt. I cannot find anything that I even like, much less than a price range that I'm willing to pay. But I love the ones I currently have that I'm starting to wonder if I just need to take them to a shoe repair place and see if they could do something to the heel of them. I think they cleather, but then the heel is just some sort of like rubber that was stuck onto it and is now peeling off, and so it's yellow underneath. Like it's not like, oh, it peels off, but it's still you know, the black color. It's not the case. So yeah, and lip balm and greeting cards, so we'll see. They do have greeting cards at Walmart, which is normally where I get my groceries, but I don't like them, so that they often have greeting cards at the thrift store exactly. I will check the thrift store as well. Something else I will also do is just give myself loose parameters and so like that's something that specifically I'll do with my grocery list, is right down some sort of category of something, but then allow myself the opportunity to see what strikes my fancy once I'm there. So I feel like that kind of also scratches the itch of wanting to just be at my whimsy just by the seat of my pants. It'll be like, Okay, I want some sort of frozen food option. I don't exactly know what it's gonna be I'm gonna let myself decide when I'm there. I want two snacks of some sort, Gonna let myself decide what those snacks are when I'm there. So that even helps to feed a little bit of that desire to just like, don't let don't confine me, don't pin me down, let me have some choices. But it's still within this.

But it also keeps you from coming home with like six snacks because you didn't give yourself a limit.

So thank you so much for listening.

We hope that this helped you identify some of the impulse spending triggers that you have and can help you make one or two changes heading into the new year. And if this really helped you, I highly highly encourage you to pre order our book. It comes out so soon. Buy what you Love without going broke. Buy what you lovebook dot com. And also if you already have pre ordered the book, leave us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. We love to read them, kind of like this one from Raspberry h They say Obsessed happens to be five stars. I'm so obsessed with this podcast. I listen to every episode even if it doesn't sound like something that would interest me, because Jen and Jill are just so fun to listen to. It's like chatting with some friends. I learned so much about saving money and being more conscious of my spending. It's amazing that they've done so many episodes and still haven't run out of things to talk about.

Yeah, so true, Raspberry h thank you so much for your kind words. And I'm so glad that you're listening to us every single time, even if it doesn't interest you. I'm glad you're here. Hopefully there's still little nuggets for you. And no, we're not running out of stuff to talk about because we're not running out of stuff to spend on. Yeah, so'll be here as long as we keep spending money and wondering how can we get food for less expensive? Will continue to be here absolutely so.

Until then, see you next time.

Leave us a rating and review and buy whatulovebook dot com.

Bye Gorugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.

What is the last thing You've you impulse bought?

Oh at the grocery store show grocery shop online. It limits impulse spending, but I have been seeing this uh protein bar circulating the built puff, So I ordered that.

Because I wanted to try it.

How is it?

I haven't tried it. Oh, I just picked up my groceries yesterday.

Okay, so I haven't tried it yet, but it was. It sat in my cart for a little bit for a week, like I add things into the cart and then you know, throughout the week and then review it before I check out.

And I still wanted them after a week.

So I bought them. So nice.

Yeah, there we go.

What about you? Potentially would this count? This morning, Eric and I were on our way home from an appointment and we just decided to stop in at the local donut chop and pick up some sausage rolls, which are really hot dog hot dogs wrapped in croissan Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and a donut.

It's a yeah, it's like a big pig and a blanket.

And I knew you were going to be here today, so I asked if you wanted something, you also want the Jalapino sausage roll. The thing about it, I mean, this is why it's so kind of Lucy goosey to me a little bit is we do have an eating out portion of our spending plan, so it does fall into that, but it wasn't something that we had plan to go stop at the donut shop. So I don't know. I think there's so much flexibility with it too, that we can even just make room for our impulse spending. We're rather than working against ourselves entirely knowing it's going to happen and allowing yourselves the freedom to do it.

Then yeah, you want to a reason, Yeah, do it in a more controlled environment that, yeah, involves a little sacrifice from maybe the way you were living before, but ultimately makes you feel better and is not the deprivation that comes with the other extreme.

Well, I gotta go eat my sausage roll now.

Go for I already ate mine.

Yeah,

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