Impulse shopping

We all know the image: a young woman cruising around the shops with her friends buying loads of clothes on her credit card that she will never wear. She might not even take them out of the bags. She will lie about what she has done and what she has spent. She will hide the items somewhere in her home. She will hide the bank statements.

As each credit card is spent up to its limit, another is started, giving the shopper the feeling of vast untapped wealth that can go on forever. The idea that this is not her money passes her by. The shopper loves the attention from the assistants in the shop, the lovely bags, and the weight on their arm of having achieved something in their day.

The urge to buy is so strong that it can come before logic or thinking. Like an electric shock. The shopper is reeling from what has happened.

I have worked with people who are careful not to buy expensive things, but persistently spend more than they have on cheap jewellery or bags and bags of charity shop items. Men who spend hours browsing the music shops collecting more and more obscure recordings of bands no one else has ever heard of. It is like a hunger that can never be sated.

Speculate to accumulate might work in theory, but the person who is in debt and keeps getting into more debt will find this nearly fatal. Borrowing money to speculate is another form of impulse buying, or gambling. Buying a string of properties when the markets are good with no idea of what to do when the markets go bad wipes out so many people in a recession. Luxury cars generally loose their value unless they have a special scarcity value. I have seen watches bought for the cost of the deposit on a home, being resold for the cost of a front door.

The person, who repeatedly takes out debt, has lost all relationship with money and therefore value. They get into debt throwing away money for a fleeting moment of illusion that the money is theirs. The more debt they carry the more they need to buy something to keep their dreadful feelings at bay.

Getting some reality on the money you are spending can be achieved by cutting off all credit and only spending with the cash that is on your person. Have a debit card that will stop working when the amount in the bank is spent. Set out in the morning with a plan on what to purchase and avoid places that send you into a dreamtime of spending.