Control the desire to shop and spend

The Simple Dollar blog today talked about some research which suggests that buying one item while shopping increases your ‘shopping momentum‘ so you’re more likely to buy other items. Apparently once you’ve made the decision to buy something, your deliberation process for buying subsequent items is less than with the initial purchase.

So how can you rein in this ’shopping momentum’? Well, having a shopping list and sticking to it is one obvious way. They offer six suggestions for how to cope with the temptation to splurge after a period of living frugally. The one that stood out to me was:

“If you make a mistake, don’t follow it with another one.”

This is a classic – it’s shoddy reasoning, but all too often it’s easy to say ‘well I fell off my budget/diet, I may as well buy/eat another one”. You need to accept the slip up and get back on track, rather than giving yourself permission to make it worse.

Got any tips for how you avoid overspending? Please share in comments.

Six Ways to Break Free of the Purge and Splurge Cycle [The Simple Dollar]