Tips For How To Stop Impulse Buying As A Young Adult

The area of personal finance and how we manage our budget is a key factor in adulting. There is no doubt that impulse spending puts all of that at risk. Not knowing how to stop making impulsive purchases can become detrimental to our future financial goals and harm our present living standards. With the rise of online shopping and the ease of saving credit card information on retail apps, impulse purchases are more tempting than ever. So, how do you stop impulse buying?

Let’s talk about it below!

Identify Your Impulse Shopping Triggers

First, take a closer look at what you often buy impulsively. Are you drawn to online shopping sites that offer free shipping on those $50 or more deals or product placements in a physical store? Do you find yourself making unplanned purchases after receiving a promotional email or while scrolling through social media? Understanding the external triggers that lead to impulse buying is the first step toward gaining control.

Put a dollar amount to your impulse purchases. Then, actually budget a smaller amount than what you are currently spending on discretionary spending. Work to stay within that monthly budget by implementing a waiting period before making any new purchases. Slowly decrease the budgeted impulse spending category until it is at a sustainable amount for your bank account. It definitely sounds easier said than done, for sure.

It Can Destroy Your Budget

Maintaining a healthy spending plan is extremely important to your financial independence, especially for young adults like ourselves who are trying to build a strong financial foundation. Impulse shopping chips away at the financial wall you are building until it collapses, leaving you with buyer’s remorse, a tight budget, and financial stress.

Without discipline, we risk putting our future selves in further financial distress. Emotional spending, often triggered by a bad day or a stressful situation, may provide instant gratification, but in the long run, it really does lead to a depleted savings account and a growing credit card statement that becomes more and more difficult to manage. 

Read More: How To Set Up An Emergency Fund As A New Adult

It Usually Creates More Debt for You

Impulse buying is, by definition, a type of spending that is not planned. Most of the time, these new purchases are made without careful consideration. Whether it’s a pair of shoes you saw in a shopping app or extra items you grabbed at the checkout line, these little purchases add up quickly.

If you do not have the funds readily available and use a debit card or even a rewards credit card instead, you may find yourself in more debt. Even worse, if you cannot pay back that debt in full when it comes due, you accrue interest on your credit card statement, making it harder to recover in the long run.

Getting into this type of spiraling debt at a young age can be soul-crushing. It absolutely sucks and there’s no other way to describe it.

It Can Keep You Living in a Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle

Impulse spending makes it difficult to build an emergency fund or save for long-term goals. When all your money goes toward paying bills and covering past impulse purchases, there is no room to work toward financial security.

Additionally, you may have to increase your work hours just to keep up with your financial decisions. Now, your time and mental health are at risk as well and who wants that?

Read More: Understand These Personal Finance Terms To Bolster Your Financial Well-Being

Prevents the Development of Healthy Spending Habits

If we constantly fall prey to impulse shopping, we fail to develop healthy spending habits. Financial discipline is the cornerstone of financial success. Without it, we stay stuck in a cycle of bad purchasing decisions, often influenced by retail therapy and advertising tactics like archival sales or text alerts offering a “good deal.” Cultivating self-control and mindful spending practices is essential for breaking free from this cycle and building a solid financial foundation for the future.

Hinders Your Overall Financial Success

As adults, we work hard to earn money, but when we give in to emotional responses and unnecessary purchases, we put our financial success at risk. Developing a strong thought process before making any purchase is a good way to avoid impulsive spending that can derail our financial goals. Taking the time to carefully consider each purchasing decision, rather than acting on impulse, is crucial for maintaining financial stability and achieving long-term financial success.

Actionable Steps To Help Curb Impulse Buying

Alright so enough of all the sticker shock warnings to highlight the downsides of impulse buying. Let’s now actually get down to some actionable steps you can take to stop impulse buying and improve your shopping habits.

Create And Stick To A Budget

The best budget is the one that you actually stick with and maintain. Simple as that. Create a budget where you detail your needs and responsibilities and stick to it. Remember, though, that the numbers in the budget are not set in stone. They will change as you grow older and as you periodically re-evaluate your personal finances. 

Recognize that your budget is a reflection of your current state in life, and as you progress throughout the months and years, your budget should be changing to meet your needs. 

Remember though that your budget is a spending plan that you create for yourself. You should actively work not to go outside of the budgetary parameters that you create.

If you are like me and want to use software to budget, I use You Need A Budget (YNAB). It is an intuitive and thorough budgeting software that has helped me greatly improve my financial life.

If interested, I have a referral link for a 34 day free trial of YNAB. Yes, it is worth every penny.

No matter, what you decide to use to budget, the most important step is building one. Of course, the second step is following it!

Read More: Here’s Why YNAB Is My Favorite Budgeting Software

Create A Fun Money Category In Your Budget

It is almost impossible to go cold turkey with something like impulse buying.

That is why it is smart and necessary to actually budget for impulse buying as you start to try and control it.

I have both a fun money and an unexpected purchases category that I fund with a certain amount of money each month. Granted, it is not a lot of money. It is just a little something for me to spend guilt-free.

This gives me a little room to indulge in an impulse buy, but it constrains my impulse buying to the amount of money I budget for those categories. 

So, give it a try. Create a budgetary perimeter and work to remain within it. I’ve found it extremely helpful since it allows me to have some impulse buying that does not destroy the budget while also working to minimize its dollar amount.

Shop With A List (Especially When Grocery Shopping)

How many of us go to the grocery store intending to pick up a few items that can go in a handbasket but end up leaving with a cart full of items?

It happens to the best of us.

But we can create systems and checkpoints that help us mitigate these occurrences. 

One simple way to accomplish this is by creating a list before well in advance of actually going to the store. You should then review the list on the day you are going to the store to see if you actually need all of those items. 

Then once you get to the store and start finding your items, re-consider if you actually need that item given its cost and benefit to you. 

Maybe you thought you needed some more sparkling water when you were making your list but while in the store you realized that you actually don’t need more sparkling water. 

That’s money saved right there. Actually, that is money saved and potential debt avoided.

Do Not Grocery Shop While Hungry

Now, this is a true adulting pro-tip when it comes to shopping for food. Never go shopping hungry! Always eat before you step foot in that grocery store! 

Shopping on an empty stomach is a quick way to impulse buy and break your budget and have your wallet crying after you leave the register.

Believe, me. I have been that guy intending to spend only $40 in the grocery store but instead spending $85. It hurts to see that receipt, especially when you sit it next to the shopping list that has way fewer items on it.

So, make a quick PB&J or something and give yourself some substance before you leave for the store. Otherwise, you will probably end up buying way more than what is on your grocery list.

However, if you must shop on an empty stomach, commit to buying something cheap, like a pizza or something for dinner. I do a lot of grocery shopping at Costco, so I’ll usually get one of their pizzas right before leaving the store. It is quick and relatively cheap. If you shop at Aldi or Trader Joe’s, they have similar offerings as well.

Create Waiting Periods For Yourself

If you want to begin to control and eventually stop your impulse buying then creating a waiting period for yourself is essential.

 If you see something you really want, especially if it is a big purchase, just follow a waiting period rule. There are plenty of them out there to live by. 

You just have to find one that is challenging enough for you so that you can properly evaluate if the item in question is truly something you need to buy. 

For example, growing up I was taught that if I want something, especially a big purchase, I need to save up twice its cost before I go and buy it. 

That way whatever item I decide to buy will not leave me with $0 saved because I followed a waiting rule that had me save up double the cost amount.

Impulse Buying Story Time

To give a personal example, I decided to buy some new earphones recently. My Beats had seen better days and served me well. So, when I saw a pair of earphones I liked, I knew I wanted to buy them. 

However, they were on sale, so the price I was willing to buy them at was not going to last long. 

I had just received one paycheck and would be receiving another right before the sale ended. So, I decided to save a portion of both my checks to cover double the costs of the earphones. That way once I bought the earphones, I would not be left with $0 dollars.

If for some reason I decided not to buy the earphones at the last minute, I would have put aside more money than I expected to. 

For me, putting in that systematic waiting period created a win-win scenario that was challenging enough to fully consider my impulse buy. 

Now, there are plenty of other waiting rules that don’t require as much intention, like simply waiting for 24 hours or doing a pro-con list. I just found that the “double the cost” rule works especially well for me. 

Remember, everyone is different and responds to incentives differently. So do what works best for you. Just be intentional with what you decide.

Good luck! You can stop impulse buying!

Further Reading

I truly believe in the importance of learning how to manage your financial well-being early as a young adult. It gives you a better chance at building a strong financial foundation for yourself which can really improve the way we go about our lives. Therefore, I have written a number of blog posts that help young adults learn about what things they should be developing when it comes to financial literacy and also adulthood as a whole. To learn more about what Adulting Starts Here offers check out our How Do You Start Adulting Page. Also, if you found any of this information helpful, please do share it with your friends and family. I want this information to be available to those who are seeking it without all the high paywalls and whatnot. Thanks for stopping by!

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Best of luck adulting!

And Remember,

Adulting Starts Here

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