Ah credit cards! What a quick, convenient way to pay for something. One tap or click and it’s done, just like that. I remember last year my oldest son broke his scooter. With all the state of the world I decided to go online and order him a new one rather than going out to the store. He was absolutely amazed at the whole idea! ‘you mean you just picked it out on your phone and now someone will bring it to the door? What else can we get?’
With all the ease of the tapping and clicking we can easily forget that it is actually money we are spending, even more than that is if we don’t pay it back this month it will cost us extra money on top of the cost of the thing. With online shopping the impulse shop has become infinitely easier to do too. We don’t even need to get out of our pajamas to blow through a few hundred or thousand dollars. If we aren’t thoughtful about how we are using the ever-easy credit cards it can get us in trouble real quick.
I also find that the minute I am carrying a balance on the card, it’s like someone just granted me permission to spend my heart out, cause well what’s another $20 when there’s already a few grand. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the rationale sometimes for just spending it. Another foolish thing I do is I don’t want to touch my savings to buy x so I pop it on the card and then next thing I know I’m putting five other things on there too. Just like a lays chip, can’t have just one. That’s just some of the foolish logic that comes into play sometimes when there’s something I want to buy that I know I don’t have room in the budget for yet.
The biggest help I have found for this mindless spending is to make it harder on myself to spend on credit. If I can make tapping or clicking a little bit more of a nuisance for myself, I can generally find the space there to stop the impulse monkey and use my brain.
- I have heard of people literally freezing the cards. Put them in water and stick them in the freezer. Then you have to wait half a day for them to thaw before using.
- You could electronically freeze them too. Call and put a hold on the card. Nothing like having to call and spend an hour on the phone to un-freeze it to make you think twice about if the purchase is worth it.
- I don’t even keep my credit cards in my wallet. They live at home in a drawer 90% of the time. That way if I plan to use it, I have to have at least thought the purchase through enough to go and take the card from the drawer and put it in my purse.
- Deleting the card from your online accounts can be helpful too. Take away the ease of amazon remembering your card for you. Make it so you have to go get the card and type the number in.
There are all sorts of ways to make it a little less convenient for you to spend cash on credit. The whole idea being that by building in more time to complete the purchase, hopefully there will be more opportunity for you to consider the purchase and make a less impulsive decision.
Another thing I find helpful is to think of shopping on credit as being in opposition to accomplishing a goal (because if it is something you want to stop doing it is probably because it’s not helping the goal). If you’re saving for a house or working on some project that needs your money, put that front and center. Put a sticky note on your card with a picture or phrase to represent the goal (on your phone or computer works too if that’s where the spending is happening). That way every time you pull it out you will be forced to decide and weigh the purchase against something that is important to you. This can make the idea of not spending on something you currently want change from feeling like deprivation to making it feel like you are taking a step towards a goal. This is a much more empowering and helpful mindset to be in when trying to cut back impulse spending. It’s the same as trying to cut a certain crappy food. The more you think about how you shouldn’t eat something, the more you crave it. Shift the focus to what you’re trying to accomplish with the not spending instead and you’ll have much better results. You could also tape a picture of your kid to the card, really tug those heart strings to inspire a better choice.
If spending on credit is a problem for you, you may also want to completely re-think the way you spend. Maybe cold turkey with those cards is worth a visit, even if it’s just for a 30 day reset. Interrupt the habits and patterns you may have formed with the cards. Lots of people choose to use credit for most of their regular spending. This is fine if the spending is inline with how you want to be spending and you pay it every month in full. If either of those conditions aren’t the case, I highly suggest a detox. No amount of convenience or points is worth the interest or accumulation of debt. It can become so habitual to whip out the card that the thought of doing it differently might induce some panic. The limitless feel of credit can definitely feel more comfy that the very real limit of your debit card or cash. Remember that pretty much every generation before us didn’t have credit cards at all and they got on just fine. Feeling the money run out when it runs out is a good thing.
I also made the choice to stop all recurring charges to the card too. Netflix and all those other little bits that I had automatically charge to my credit card, I went and changed them to come straight out of my bank instead. For me I like the idea of having all my money go in and out of one place. Much less room for denial that way and way easier for record keeping too.
An interesting little experiment that can help you deal with impulse spending in a more permanent way is to start keeping track of your moods, thoughts and feelings when you’re feeling you want to spend on stuff. For instance I know that when I’m feeling like I don’t measure up in some way I am much more likely to want to go and buy new clothes, or home stuff. When I’m feeling stressed about things the kids are going through I’m much more tempted to go and buy bikes and toys and things I think will make them happier. If you can spot some areas where your feelings are driving unconscious spending you can work on finding better ways to deal with those that won’t break the bank. Are you hungry? Lonely? Pissy with your spouse? Stressed? If you are using shopping as a means to dull some pain in your life, expect that pain point to become louder and clearer when you take away the temporary feel good of shopping. Try and lean into it and journal it out or talk it out to work through it and find a better solution rather than numbing it away with something else. You might find some trends in the time of day or after spending time with certain people, or something else that can give you a place to swap some habits.
The convenience of spending on credit, especially online, has made impulse spending too, too easy to do. This can have severe impacts on our levels of debt, and our ability to make other financial goals a reality. That 20 or 50 dollars at a time is often the way tens of thousands in debt appear. Sometimes it’s the big things that happen or the big purchases, but by in large it’s the hundreds of small purchases that add up to big problems. Reeling in the impulse can be a hard thing to do, but I hope the ideas above can make that a little easier.
Lots of love
Dawn
Tax Wise 