How to stop impulse shopping and tips for emotional spending

have you ever found yourself mindlessly scrolling on Tick Tock only to find yourself bombarded with products and enticing shopping hauls it's hard to resist the urge to purchase when everyone seems to be raving about the latest must-have items and today I am going to talk about a topic that is so close to home for many of us which is impulsive shopping emotional buying and the powerful influence of social media on our purchasing decisions I have joining me today the amazing spending coach Paige Pritchard she's here to share her expertise on how to break free from the grep of impulsive shopping and regain control over your finances are you ready let's get started okay hello everybody and welcome back to the podcast I am so thrilled to have pager today page I have been following you on Tick Tock really Tech talk related said for you it was at a time where I definitely needed you and I just love all the resources that you provide as a spending coach because that is one of the number one things that comes up with my clients in therapy some of these impulsive behaviors and we don't actually address it as much because we don't think it's as important or as pivotal to to share these things but then we start seeing like money issues anxiety issues and I'm excited to have you to share a little bit about your areas of expertise specifically talking about how social media influences us um yes oh my gosh well we could truly talk about that for hours right I mean it's just it's huge and it's like so ironic that like we found each other on social media but I'm so happy to have this conversation with you today and to your point I think that you are spot on when you were just talking about this isn't typically an area that when we look at maybe like mindset issues we're having emotional issues we're having like working through past traumas things like that that money and specifically our spending habits is an area that can really get impacted by that I think that most of us think of money as just a really like finite black and white numbers driven a very like masculine resource when the reality is is that there's so much mindset there's so many limiting beliefs there's so much emotions and the behavioral aspect of money is so huge like I always say money is 90 mental and emotional and only like 10 numbers right so if you go into your money and specifically the spending side of it and you're only focused on on the numbers piece then there's going to be a whole slew of issues that come up right like you're going to have the numbers and you're going to have that how-to this is what I see with my clients a lot but then when it comes to actually nailing the behaviors something is just going to start to crumble along the way right and you're just going to be like I have the blueprint and I have like the structure it's just like I can't seem to stick to the structure or with the behavioral components things just start to break down so firstly just want to say that you hit the nail on the head on that and that was just kind of like a long little side note that I had in my head I just wanted to affirm that but just to kind of give your audience a background on me and who I am and what I do so I'm Paige Pritchard and I refer to myself as a spending coach I am a life coach who really kind of focuses in the one area of Life of money but even going much deeper into the money space I solely focus on what I call the outflow of money so what I typically help women with is impulse shopping and overspending I typically work with women who make great incomes right like they make a good income but they're spending all of it and they don't really have a lot to show for it and what I also say and you probably see this a lot as your work as a therapist but you know I say that they're kind of using money as a form to Escape their life using it to numb using it to buffer or just using it as an escape and also using it to buy things that can't be bought like using money in an attempt to buy their self-worth to buy their confidence which are things that can't be bought right like ultimately they can't be bought we don't think of it that way like the world and consumer culture that we live in tells us that it can be bought and so you know I work with a lot of women in their 20s 30s 40s who have gone through years and years and years of spending their money on a lot of things in an attempt to you know like I say like buy things that ultimately can't be bought and then they're kind of left feeling like okay well what gives right so I focus on the outflow of money spending it's the one area I would say like a couple years ago when I started this work I was really focusing in money as a whole all of money you know like making money and you know I did I I did a lot on that side but this one area is the area that women kept coming to me almost like in secret right it was kind of like slipping through the cracks of my DMs and they're like hey like I don't I don't want to ask you this question and like don't tell anyone I'm asking you this but it you know it was along the lines of like I'm in a lot of credit card debt because I'm spending too much or like I'm buying a lot I'm shopping a lot I feel really guilty I feel really ashamed and spending is just the area of money that we just think about you just do it right we're like you just spend it but one of my big messages is that spending is a skill it's actually something that we can get better at like I'm like it's just like riding a bike right like it's just like it's something that you have to learn how to do and do it well it's not just like well we're just gonna spend the money it's like there's a good way to do it and I like I don't want to say there's a good way and a bad way to do it but I'm like you can learn how to become a a good and a better spender so that's what I help women do like you said there is a way that's going to support your your own personal goals right so like not necessarily labeling at bad behavior but maybe behavior that really isn't surveying your own personal finance goals and you not seeing that this could be a side where you can improve and Implement you know new strategies to make sure that you are making progress I love that you said that spending is a skill like learning how to spend is a skill because growing up the mentality for me was if you have it spend it almost as if like you never know when you're gonna get this again even if even when I reached a level of like having that overflow having that overflow of money it's like oh I had this desire to spend it I shared this earlier in the year this example of I had done my taxes and my account had said oh you have this much left and immediately I was like oh my gosh how am I going to spend it like that was the immediate thing I didn't know that there was another option which was like how do I want to save this or how do I want to give myself a cushion or how do I it automatically went to how do I spend this you know yeah no and I can completely relate to that because how I really came into this work is I actually myself used to be a compulsive Shopper about a decade ago in my younger 20s I once impulse shopped my way through like my entire annual salary and this what you're touching on right now is something that I work a lot with with the women in my community but it's something I Call Your Capacity to just have money and a lot of the women that I work with really struggle with this right because we're constantly in the mindset and I was the same way like when I was really in my shopping era is I would already know before I would even get paid or before the money would hit my bank account I would already know and have decided what I was gonna go spend that money on and this is something that I I feel a lot of us don't consciously tap into because to your point this is a very like subconscious thing that's going on where we have these subconscious thoughts of well somebody might take it away from me so I'm going to go ahead and like regain a sense of that lost control that I feel like I haven't had up until this point and I'm gonna I'm gonna make those decisions and I'm gonna resume that control by spending it right away and I also think too that a lot of women really struggle with the identity piece of it right like being someone who steps into the identity of someone who has money and that was my big issue when I impulse shopped through my through my annual salary because that was when I just graduated from college and I went from being like a broke college student who had no more than twenty dollars in her bank account at any point in time to making a sixty thousand dollar salary and so it was almost like I was in this identity of being a broke college student and then boom overnight I started making sixty thousand dollars so my reality represented and my bank accounts represented something much different than my identity and so it was almost kind of like it's kind of like our way of our brain self-sabotaging and this is why you see lottery winners this happens to lottery winners all of the time and I'm not I'm this is like a much larger skill right but you can just take this principle and distill it down so like 30 of lottery winners end up going bankrupt 80 of NFL players also end up experiencing financial difficulty shortly after leaving the league and I think a big part of this is the identity piece of it of especially when we go from these like big jumps in income it's almost like when our identity is still rooted in this person that we used to be or the financial reality that maybe we grew up in right like if you're someone who grew up in a household where money was really scarce and maybe kind of like a like a poverty background that sort of thing when you actually start making money of your own although it sounds nice right like it sounds nice to be like Oh I'm making sixty thousand dollars now there's there's still something within us that is still like very uncomfortable with that having that level of wealth and I know for me it was an element of like I can't be trusted with this I'm gonna screw this up I don't know what to do with this I can't manage it and I'm not I'm not worthy of making this amount of wealth and so we find ways to self-sabotage that so to your point what what you're saying it's like almost having money gets gets to be uncomfortable for us which is very ironic because a lot of us are always thinking about like oh it'll be so nice one day when I'm like making all this money and all this stuff and then we get ourselves to the point where we are making that amount of money and we end up so sabotaging it so it's like so fascinating how all of this works oh my gosh yes there's this thing in therapy that we call magical thinking so I will be happy when I will be happy when this happens I'll be happy when I have this x amount of money and one of the things that I've learned working with like ambitious women and women entrepreneurs they'll get to the next step they'll get to the promotion they'll get to the six figure seven figures and the money problems are still there the scarcity mentality is still there the self-doubt you know and lack of self-esteem is still there because it we're not necessarily actually addressing what you're saying like we're we we have this as a behavior of like to cope and we're not actually addressing like the root causes of why we're doing what we're doing yeah and I see that a lot in my clients too because because a lot of women that I work with think that the solution to their problem is making more money and so they think like okay well I just need to I just need to make more and when I actually start to get into their numbers and stuff like that and I start to look at what's coming in and what's going out it's very clear to me I'm like this isn't an inflow problem and I want to make this clear like sometimes the problem with money can be an inflow problem like sometimes the problem is like simply you're just not making enough right but oftentimes it's not an inflow problem it's an outflow problem and when we have an outflow problem our brain automatically wants to go to okay the solution to this problem is just having more inflow come in instead of actually changing the behaviors that's causing the outflow problem in the first place and then to your point they make more money and the behaviors still happen like I always say like whether you're if you're making thirty thousand dollars now your brain is still going to come with you if you're if you're going to be making a hundred thousand dollars your brain is is still going to be there you don't just magically like get a new brain when you when you go from making thirty thousand dollars to a thousand to a hundred thousand like would it be nice if you did sure but it's like your brain's gonna come with you and therefore if you to your point if you don't address the root cause of it those behaviors will continue and I always say like if you can't manage thirty thousand dollars you're not going to be able to manage a hundred thousand or three hundred thousand yeah exactly what do you think are some telltale signs of someone who does have shopping habits that are not supporting them or what we were just talking about having this overflow but still having this mentality I need to spend it all yeah so this is kind of you know I I always like to talk through kind of the signs of of compulsive shopping right which again is something that I definitely used to be so one of the biggest tall tell signs and this was certainly true for me is if you use shopping to change your emotional state and typically with compulsive Shoppers when they are shopping they will be in a negative emotional state before they start shopping so next time you go shopping or next time you want to buy something or spend something and you kind of catch yourself having the mindset of like I want to do this to make to make myself feel better I'm not feeling so great right now like tap into what's the emotional state that you're in are you in a negative emotional state and are you using shopping to get you out of that now the ironic part about that is like they've done studies to show that with compulsive Shoppers like they do kind of get that quick rush and that like quick flood of dopamine that does cause like a spike in happiness or kind of that like euphoric feeling but almost always what happens after that and what's waiting around the corner is the crash I call it the spending crash it would just it's it's similar to having like a sugar crash like if you eat too much sugar or having a hangover if you drink too much alcohol it's the same effect right it's the pain pleasure systems in our brain trying to balance each other out so the ironic part is is that there will often be the crash and the Crash will even take you lower than where you were before you started shopping so it's like are you using shopping to make yourself feel better and do you find typically after shopping that you have the crash and then a couple other signs are like you know one one Tall Tale one is you could be spending more than you're making so if you're in debt if you have credit card debt meaning you're spending more than your than you make however I do want to put a little asterisk on that one because you can still be a compulsive Shopper and not be in debt and sometimes I see that a lot with with the women that I work with like they think that their shopping isn't a problem because they make great money and they're not they're not spending more than they have so they're not in debt but they kind of check all these other boxes but for some people it does mean spending more than you make credit card debt if you're hiding your behaviors so if you're hiding your behaviors from maybe like a close friend or maybe a parent or a spouse or a partner you know it's it's very similar I'll I'll say this like being a compulsive Shopper or even having a shopping addiction it's definitely not something to take lightly and I think it's kind of it's one of those things in our society and our culture I see it all the time on social media where people kind of like laugh it off they're like oh ha ha like I have a shopping addiction and it's like having a shopping addiction is no different than like having a gambling addiction being an alcoholic like being addicted to some other substance like the reaction and the dependency in our brain is very much similar so our society kind of wants to play it off like it's not a big deal compared to maybe other forms of addiction but it it definitely is something to like take seriously and I I want to say this like there's compulsive shopping and then there's it turning into an addiction right right so the the addiction would just be like constantly thinking about it like you just cannot help to be always out there like spending money buying buying acquiring that sort of thing I I don't think like for me personally I ever got to the point of it being an addiction for me I think if I had continued it might have gotten to that point but I was definitely a compulsive Shopper like I talked I checked a lot of those boxes of like I was using shopping to make myself feel better I was hiding my behavior from other people so again those are just some things to kind of look out for and maybe one of those resonates with you maybe none of them do but also at the same time I would just say like if you feel like you're like the spending that you're doing just isn't serving you and I I want to say this too like I think that sometimes we think that in order to want to work on an area in our life it has to get to a point where it's like really bad and I also believe too that something doesn't have to get to the level of where it's like a compulsive Behavior or even to where it's an addiction for you to be like okay I need to do something about this if you feel like you're just spending your money in a way that's just like not doing it for you right like if you're if you're spending money on a lot of things that you're just kind of like buying to buy and after you get the thing you're just kind of like I don't really know why I did that like why did I do that like why did I spend money on this I didn't really get much use out of it if you're not hitting other financial goals that you want to be hitting like let's say you're like I really want to save up for a down payment for a home which means that in order to do that I'm gonna have to put aside 500 a month and you're not able to do that because you're spending too much like your spending is eating into that and it's almost kind of like sabotaging future goals that you have for yourself that could also be a good enough reason just to say this is an area that I specifically want to work on yeah there there are two things that like just caught my attention what you were saying one of them is this idea that we kind of it's kind of embedded in our culture to poke fun on impulsive shopping and like calling it you know retail therapy to justify our purchases I don't know if you've seen those mats where it's like hide the Amazon packages so my husband won't see them you know like so we've like really we've really made it a point to like to justify that this is behavior that can be okay and I think too another point that you made was the fact that because we're not in debt because we don't have this like extreme negative outcome that it doesn't we don't think we were the problem right instead you said that we end up having internal behaviors that were like the feelings of Shame and guilt and then hiding things right that results in that the external Behavior but it doesn't necessarily I think for a lot of people they have a hard time noticing it because it's like like you said there's no external issue to someone looking inside they're like oh well you're doing great with your money you're making money like you're not in debt like there's nothing wrong with that yeah a common example I often use for this because I would say that one of the most common questions that I get from people on social media or wherever is if I'm impulse shopping but I'm still spending within my means is that still bad and I actually did a tick tock video on this and it was funny people kind of had like adverse reactions to this I just this is just my personal opinion though like my answer to that question is still yes right like it's still a problem and this is the analogy that I always use right it's kind of the equivalent of somebody who has a really really fast metabolism but who eats a lot of junk food and sugar and just stuff that's like terrible for them but they don't gain any weight because they have a fast metabolism and they're like oh well the fact that I'm just filling up my body with with junk food and sugar and maybe like alcohol it's fine because I'm not gaining any weight like the number on the scale isn't changing although there's all these to your point you made an excellent like correlation to this it's like all the internal stuff they have no energy they're sleeping awful they can't focus like they're not being as productive because they're not fueling their body with what it needs to be fueled with to be at optimal levels and it's kind of the same thing with our ending again because a lot of women are like well I'm not in debt right and I think it's just like when we don't have the obvious consequence that maybe other people are suffering we're like it's not a problem right like well if this person ate what I ate they would gain weight I'm not gaining weight so it's not a problem for me oh I make a lot of money I make you know maybe I make more money than the average person and I'm not going into debt so it's not a problem and to your point like there's so many I'm I'm really big on there's so many non-financial consequences to impulse shopping and overspending people just want to focus on debt and what's left in your bank account I'm like clutter right there have been so many studies done on the effect that like clutter has on us like it increases our cortisol levels it puts us in a low grade of fight or flight so when you shop a lot you have a lot of like clutter it you know to to your point it really really takes a hit to your self-confidence right like constantly Time After Time After Time when you're constantly telling yourself okay I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to this budget I'm gonna go in I'm only gonna stick to my list and you're constantly breaking that word to yourself like I call it being out of Integrity with yourself so there's just there's so many like non-financial consequences like a lot of women in my community it's adversely affecting their relationships and their marriages right so we we always want to think of oh well I don't I don't check the box for experiencing the obvious consequence of this meanwhile there's like all this other stuff that's going wrong and just because we don't have the one obvious benefit we're like it's fine it's not a problem what really it is it's causing a lot of adverse effects in other areas of our life yeah and I think like the biggest at least for my clients when I've seen them like their biggest struggle when it comes to changing behavior is like well I got myself in this mess so write like this self-deprecating negative thoughts and feeling like well it's my fault feeling adults and the shame so that kind of stops them from taking action changing things do you think that there's some steps where they can start if they are feeling like they're listening to this and they're like oh yeah this is me I may not have these negative consequences or I am in the point where I am seeing some outward negative con the obvious consequences but I just don't even know where to start where to start helping myself feel better in different ways than chopping yeah so I think to your point there's kind of like two parts to this so the the first is and I I just want to say like this runs so deep with money the spending shame because again and especially with women as women we already come into a world where we're told you know compared to our American counterparts that we're just we're not going to be as good with money as our male counterpoints right we're we're fed that messaging like our entire lives and we're also again this is very like subliminal but there's also this message out there that the spending that women do is frivolous and it's wasteful and then the spending that men do it's like it's an investment you know what I mean like it's it's it's thought out and it's an investment and all this sort of stuff like so we're already up against just all of this like subconscious programming that we've all been fed our entire lives and so I just want to tell those of you who are experiencing what I call spending shame I want you to know that like first of all it's totally normal and and oftentimes it's it's a result of all of these things that that were fed right one of my favorite analogies this is just like a good place to start because I think I think sometimes with shame with it being so deep it can seem like this really like huge like deep thing an analogy that I always like to give is whenever you're thinking about past choices or past decisions that you've made with money that maybe you feel shame or guilt over I always say think of those past choices of money kind of like how you would think about an outfit that you wore 10 years ago or maybe in 15 15 years ago right so if we were all to like go onto Facebook or whatever find a picture of ourselves from 15 years ago I guarantee you that almost every single one of us like the first thing we would do is we would focus on like what we're wearing in that photo and we would be like oh my gosh like that outfit you know what I mean we'd be like right no like I know for me it used to be like the big like Bobble necklaces and stuff like that like why were we all dressed in business casual yeah exactly exactly and so whenever that happened like you know this has happened to me too like when you see an old photo of yourself and you're like oh my gosh like look at what I was wearing and you kind of have this like moment where you're like like oh my gosh but but at the end of the day you kind of chuckle about it right like you're not super serious about it you kind of chuckle about it you're like oh haha like that's so funny that I thought I looked like so amazing at the time right like I really thought I was styling and I want you to think about your past choices with money in that way because you know it's like when we look at ourselves in the past we don't like in that example we're not like oh my gosh you're so stupid I can't believe like you wore that like that was such a terrible decision like we don't like berate ourselves for those choices that we made in the past mostly because we can remember back to that time and we can remember like how in that moment we really really thought that we were making a good choice and a good decision even if today we would make a completely different choice and a completely different decision with the knowledge and the experience in the background that we have right now so I always say like is it possible for you to have compassion for your past self and I'm really big on and I find that we do this a lot is we're constantly judging the past version of ourselves with knowledge that we have today but we didn't have back then absolutely like I should have known better I should have done this I should have you know and it's like how how you didn't even know any of that information right exactly and so you know I'm I'm really big on like don't ever beat your past self up for a decision that she made with the information that she had at the time because really at the end of the day like that's all of us are trying to do all of us are just trying to do like the best that we can with the information that we have like at this at this point in time right and that's how that's how life is like you're gonna go and evolve and mature and you're going to learn new things and have new life experiences that are going to teach you new things that are going to inform future decisions that you're going to make that you don't even have in in today's world so my thing is is like can we find compassion for that past version of us and even if the past version of you the justification was you know like I did a lot of impulse shopping and I put a lot of stuff on credit cards even if that past version of you was just doing that because she was trying to self-soothe and she was trying to make herself feel better and in that moment she really thought and she really believed that that was going to solve the problem that that was going to be the solution even though now we might have more knowledge and information to say like okay well I know now that it doesn't work but it's it's again it's it's viewing your past self just how you would view your past self in that example right it's kind of like can we have love for that version of myself that really thought in that moment she was making a good decision and just getting disciplined about I'm not going to choose to like beat myself up and berate myself for information and knowledge and experiences that I just simply didn't have back then there's nothing good that comes out of that yeah it doesn't help I always tell clients I mean whenever they're like why am I doing what I'm doing I I do tell them like is the Y gonna help you do the what next like is it gonna help you do the what next like why did I and and what I'm saying in the context of like what a shame like why did I do that like why why couldn't I done better than you know like is that why going to help you instead of like okay what can I do better what did I learn from that right exactly yeah and I know like with debt right like debt tends to be a big area of money that we experience a lot of guilt and shame over right and I'm really big on listen you know like me and my husband went through we paid off about 98 000 worth of debt like student loans and credit card debt and you know it was like I remember during this during that time this was like years and years and years ago before I came into any of this work and before I knew any of this right and it was really hard on myself during that time and I really thought that the answer and the solution was to like torture myself through the debt payoff process when really now that I see that like it's actually possible to pay off debt or to like form a new relationship with money from a very like sufficient kind of like abundant place and to your point I think how we do that primarily is not really focusing on the past that kind of got us here but it's it's kind of just the acceptance of like okay I'm here and now what like how do I make the best of this moving forward what is this debt going to teach me what is it going to open up to me and how am I going to become a better version of myself through the process of paying off this debt because to me I'm like you're gonna have to pay it off one way or the other so you can either you know I I I know I use a lot of like food analogies but they're just there's so many now there's so many like closeness right because I'm like it's the equivalent of hating your body skinny can you do it sure if you want to but it's like how you're gonna feel on the journey is how you're gonna feel when you arrive right so it's kind of like it's a good one yeah and like if you're gonna have to pay off this debt let's actually make it something that's gonna help you serve you turn you into a better version of yourself versus just like doing what I did which felt awful and terrible of just like hiding in the guilt and the shame the whole time and and then thinking that once it's paid off you're just gonna like again you're just gonna get a new brain like the universe is going to be like congratulations you're debt free here's a new brain and you're just magically gonna be like oh I just feel so much better now it does not work that way I hear you I think we think that we need to criticize ourselves to positive change and that I mean that can help like I mean you said yourself like it did help you change some behaviors but it's not like you got a new brain like you had to work through that self-criticism in order to for that behavior to be long term right like again if we hate ourselves too skinny by that time like how we'll ever learn to give ourselves compassion right because that was the first like step that you said give yourself compassion see yourself in a compassionate way so that you are able to move forward and make positive changes when it comes to your spending habits yeah yeah absolutely so and you know I'll say this it's definitely easier said than done right like I get it I've I've been there but it's just compassion and and self-love it's like it's it's a muscle right like the way that we think about ourselves and our inner dialogue is that is a habit right like that is a habit that we form and just how if you want to change any other habit you know if you're if you're like I want to start waking up at you know 6 a.m every day or I want to start going on a walk every day or like any other habit that you would want to form having love for yourself compassion for yourself and being kind to yourself is also a habit that you are going to have to practice because many of us our brains get familiar and those neural Pathways of like the negative self-talk become very strong and I think a lot of us think like oh okay well now that I know this work and now that I have this knowledge it's going to be like a like a a switch in my mind that I just am able to just flip on and it's like no it's going to take some time but you know just just be kind and patient and give yourself Grace and just know that it's a journey and you know it definitely takes time but that's okay because I'm like the time's gonna go by anyways so if the time's gonna go by like do you want the time going by like you know still feeling the way that you're feeling and feeling awful and indulging in the self-loathing and the toxic negative thoughts like or do we want to work to change it right even if it does take time I agree I think not only are we kind of working against our you know internal dialogue but there's also all this like external feedback we have like scrolling on Tick Tock and getting that hit of dopamine especially you know like with the pandemic I think that really did isolate us a lot and to feel connected things like getting the Stanley Cup you know or you know little or getting the walking pad or you know all these things that went viral on social media like it it almost felt like I need to get that in order to feel connected to people and I think too like signing like the email subscriptions right and then like this sale is happening now I'm kind of curious if you have any like tips or strategies when we are faced with these external like influences I do and I'm happy to give you guys some good tips that you can start with but I just want to kind of like second what you just said because I kind of think that you know as human beings we're wired to compare to other human beings right like like physiologically that's just how we're designed as human beings and I think that social media has just taken our propensity to do that and it's just poured like gasoline on an open fire right and in terms of like our spending habits it's like social media and there's something about Tick Tock right like I know that you and I found each other on Tick Tock but I love Tick Tock like Tick Tock has truly become my favorite but I honestly think that like the over consumption on Tick Tock it's very unique compared to other platforms I can't necessarily like put my finger on it but I think you're so right and actually I've never heard someone describe it the way that you did of saying that almost like it feels like a community and when you see all these videos of people that having it it's almost like you want to feel like you're a part of like the club and you have it as well right but let's talk about some tips to kind of just keep keep all of that in check right the best thing that you can do and I know this sounds very very simple but it truly is one of the most helpful and effective things that you can do is to put a bit of time in between you and anything that you buy because I think what has happened with social media with Amazon with you know one-click purchases and credit card autofills it has just become so incredibly easy and convenient to spend money and that's not an accident that is by Design what I always tell the women in my community I'm like look I am not saying that any of you are not smart I know that we were all incredibly smart women but the retailers and the marketers are smarter than all of us all of us they spend Millions upon Millions upon Millions dollars a year they have teams of people whose sole job right is to study you is to know you on a deep and intimate level and is to know psychologically how to manipulate you to get you to spend money and buy things and a big part of that is they want to make the shopping experience as easy and as convenient for you as they possibly can because they because our our human brains hate obstacles friction jumping through hoops right like our brain is pretty lazy like our lizard brain is pretty lazy it just wants to like kind of be running on autopilot so just know and again I'm not saying any of us listening to this aren't smart I know we are but it's just like you would just be fascinated to know like all the little tips and tricks they have up their sleeve that you don't even realize is a tip and trick until you start studying it you're like whoa it's crazy so putting a pause in between seeing something and buying something is one of the best things that you can do because we have all gotten into this cycle of like see it want it by it see it want it buy it it's just become this like reinforced habit Loop and so if you can practice see it want it pause right and one of my favorite tools to have is I call it a things I want to buy list and I actually have mine in notion I don't know if you know of it's Notions kind of like a I don't know it's like an online kind of like Notes app or something like that you can like basically organize your life in it right so I have my things I want to buy list in notion but you could have this like in the notes app on your phone written in a journal something like that but anytime I see something that I want to buy whether it's like on a social media ad or even if I'm just like strolling the aisles of Target and I see something I'll either take a screenshot of it if it's something on my phone or I'll take an actual picture of it and when I'm sitting down at my computer I will add it to my things I want to buy list because the thing with shopping and buying is that actually the most pleasurable part about it to us is the anticipation period before you buy something and that's why they call dopamine the anticipation molecule because dopamine actually doesn't start getting released when you buy something it starts getting released when you start thinking and anticipating buying something right so the reason that this tool is so effective is because when you see something that you want to buy and then you kind of say Okay brain I'm going to give myself a little bit of time I think 72 hours minimum is good I think for a lot of us who struggle with spending and shopping 24 hours frankly just isn't long enough I'm a big fan of making that window a little bit wider I say 72 hours if you can a week actually I typically find is like the sweet spot but when you get to sit down and add something to your things I want to buy list you're still getting a hit of dopamine because you're adding it to your things I want to buy list and you're kind of like relishing in that anticipation of possibly buying this in the future right so it's actually like that period of time leading up to a purchase is just as pleasurable to us as actually getting to buy something and oftentimes I find like when I add things to my things I want to buy list I would say half the stuff that goes on there I never end up getting because after I've given my brain time to cool off I come back to it and I'm like yeah I know I I'm not like as excited about this thing as I was like a week ago right and again that's just like how our brains are designed to work especially like you touched on sales right with sales like I call it your sale brain when you see a sale your your brain lights up like a Christmas tree right there's so many things happening in your brain when you see a sale like you get a hit of dopamine you you you get that rush we go into what's called competitive mode where it's almost like we feel like we're playing a game that we're trying to win right like we're trying to win against the retailers we're trying to win against other consumers who have to pay more than us that's why they call it bargain hunting right it feels like a hunt right so you're in Euphoria with the dopamine you're in competitive mode and then the other thing that's happening with sales which this is the least obvious to us but the most powerful is your loss aversion kicks in the amygdala the part of your brain that controls your fear responses activates and so you go into loss aversion mode because there's almost like this fear of if I don't buy this thing and if I don't get it on sale and if I'm not able to save this money I will never be able to like I will miss out on this deal forever right and so your sale brain I always say like especially with sales give yourself time to cool off and I know the rebuttal I always get is like well what about 24 hour flash sales they're only 24 hours you know what I mean and I'm like listen Okay one more thing about sales right there have been there's this non-profit called cons I think it's called consumer's checkbook and every couple of years they do studies on sales and they study like pretty much all of the big retailers right like the Costco's Kohl's Nordstroms like they like they study a lot of the really big retailers and they track their sales and basically long story short most sales are completely bogus because they're always on sale like it's always on sale right like there's a couple big offenders like Old Navy is a big offender of this Kohl's is a big offender of this right like if you walk into a Kohl's and like you you don't see that like that little like gray sign at the top where it's like two for one or you know this is 30 off like you don't buy anything full price at Kohl's right everything's on sale and they do that by Design right the sales are kind of bogus and really like the the pricing strategy to them is like let's just say you go to Old Navy and there's a pair of leggings that's forty dollars and it's 25 off so you can buy them for thirty dollars instead of forty dollars Old Navy never ever ever had any intention of you ever paying forty dollars for those leggings ever like they knew that they that you were never gonna pay 40 for those they were never gonna charge you forty dollars but as a consumer when we walk in and we're like oh 25 off like I can save ten dollars like so those leggings are essentially like perpetually on sale always all of the time like the sale if you even want to call it that because it's not really even a sale it never goes away our brains like to see what's called an anchor price which is the price that our brain it's called an anchor price because your brain anchors to that number so in this example the anchor price would be forty the forty dollars the full price so we anchor to that full price and then we say oh well I would have paid 40 but now I can pay 30 right so sales like putting just putting a pause whether something is on sale or it's not on sale but especially if it's on sale and even if your brain wants to argue with you to be like but it's never gonna be on sale again ever I'm like it will it will be and also if you think about it this way I'm like every store does a sale pretty much with every holiday and we pretty much have holidays like every 30 days right like a store will have a Valentine's sale a St Patrick's sale an Easter sale A Mother's Day sale a Father's Day Sale a Fourth of July sale a going back to schools I mean a Labor Day Sale it's like every 30 days there pretty much is a sale right so if your brain's trying to be like this is never going to be on sale ever again it's like that's probably not true absolutely and honestly like I think for me because my because I've had that thought too like oh my gosh what if I miss out on that item and I had to kind of give myself the evidence that I'm not missing out on anything that two weeks from now three weeks from now and that would mean like okay like if my brain is saying I'm going to regret this I am going to really be like oh man I should have done it that's okay it's a temporary uncomfortable feeling let me see the evidence three weeks from now if this item is still on sale or this item is still at the price that I initially wanted to buy it and you know if the result is it's still on sale or it's still at a lower price like that means that they're missing with me you know it's not detrimental it is not life or death for me to get that item something too that I've done to kind of pause especially on Tick Tock because I love watching like organization ASMR type videos and hauls and one of the things that that could trigger like oh I should buy something right what I've done is I'll save it but I've never go to my save folder I never do it and when I do it is so overwhelming to scroll down and look at every single video that I almost don't even do it so what I end up doing is at the end of the month I will just delete all the videos because it's just the act of like oh that anticipation like I could get it at some point exactly like giving myself that that space I've also used I don't know if you're familiar with this it's called leave me alone it's a Chrome extension I think it's a Chrome extension where it basically helps you unsubscribe to email lists and things like that and that has been super helpful because I will notice that I will subscribe to things that I've unsubscribed through in the past and I have to kind of remind myself what are you doing like because then I'll start getting text messages about the sales and things like that and I'm like whoa this is too much especially if I'm feeling down especially on my period my whole strategy is like look if this is like really a behavior that you're trying to change I think that initially out of the gate there's a lot of kind of like things that you can do to limit your exposure to triggers and so yeah to to your point the the one that I've used recently is it's called unenroll me right so either like leave me alone or unenroll me right those both are very helpful because you can clean out your inbox two other really cool Chrome extensions that I'll share with you guys one is called pause and these are both free one's called pause and I'll send these to you Monica so you can put them in your show notes like maybe just link to their websites or something and then the other is called I believe it's called icebox but they're Chrome extensions that you use on your desktop and so you can when they're whenever they're turned on what pause will do is anytime you go to a website that you're trying to shop Less on it kind of pulls up this like window and it has this time it has this like ticker timing down for like 30 seconds to like a minute and it it basically tells you like let's take a pause right like let's take a pause before we go before we go shop and then what ice box will do is icebox allows you while you're online shopping they call it putting it on ice which is where you say like I'm not gonna buy this right now I'm gonna buy it maybe like 30 days from now right and so in what icebox does is it will actually replace the buy now button with a little button that says put it on ice so those two are really good and then to your point like on your phone there's a lot of just like different app blockers website blockers that you can use for blocking maybe like certain websites or blocking certain apps at certain times of the day and that's another thing for me is like really take your time to uncover what you're spending triggers are kind of thinking about when do I shop like is there a certain time of day that I typically do a lot of shopping is it I'm like for me it was all it was on my lunch break I would leave and I would go up to the mall on my lunch break so I was always shopping on my lunch break or maybe for you it's at night after you've had a hard day and you just kind of want to like curl up in bed with your laptop or your phone and like do some online shopping how how are you shopping are you shopping on your phone are you shopping on your computer are you shopping in person what are you buying is there is there a category of things that you're tending to do a lot of overspending on but when you can uncover what your spending triggers are the next step that you can take is use that information to put some boundaries around your consumption habits so for me I noticed a couple of years ago that I was doing a lot of shopping on my phone mostly because of social media right the rise of social media and whenever I would have like some wine at night I noticed that I tended to do more shopping so now I've put boundaries in place with my own personal consumption habits where I don't shop on my phone like if I if I want to buy something I either have to buy it in person or I have to sit down at my desktop computer and go to the website and buy it now I do have a couple exceptions for that like I'm not talking about like going on Amazon and like buying more coffee pods like I'm not saying that but it's kind of like you guys know like the purchases I'm talking about right like when I tell myself I'm not gonna buy anything on my phone then that takes away a lot of buying stuff on social media making you know like stuff like that and I also put a boundary in place that I don't buy anything once I've had some wine or any alcohol for that matter so once I've had a glass of wine or once I've had like a margarita I put my phone away and I'm like okay like we're we're not gonna do any shopping doing this yeah after we've had after so it's like it's uncovering it's like taking some time to really think about what are the patterns that I'm seeing with my shopping are there certain times of day are there certain things going on like maybe people are there certain people that I tend to do a lot of shopping with right kind of noticing what those habits and those triggers are and then maybe thinking to yourself okay what are some maybe some boundaries that I can start to put in place to limit my triggers in the beginning as I'm trying to change this Behavior I love that those are some amazing Journal prompts by the way like being able to understand like you're spending triggers because as you were talking I like remember this situation where I usually always park at the specific parking lot at the mall and every time it would make me go past ritzia or is it Abercrombie Starbucks Chick-fil-A like all of these things and I noticed because I parked there I'm literally going like seeing my favorite places so let's just say I was going to the mall for I don't know I was going to pick up an order at American Eagle now I just park right where that store is so I do not get tempted to walk through all of these stores because even though I went with the intention of not buying anything just the the sheer curiosity of going in there will get me so it was just funny I was noticing that pattern no and that happens to like so many of us right like even it doesn't matter if you're talking about going to the mall or going into a Costco or going into Target or wherever it's just like we we often get into this mindset of well I'm just gonna go see what they have right like you you hear this all the time on social media right where we say this with Target a lot like I'm gonna let Target tell me what I need kind of like no no no we tell Target what we need from her right like she doesn't tell us what we need we tell her what but we get into this mindset of like well I'm just I'm just gonna see right like I'm gonna I'm gonna see what they have and that's why so many of us like we go into Target for shampoo right which you know if we only get the shampoo that should have been ten dollars and then by the time we're checking out we've spent 250 dollars and we've bought like 10 things that we didn't necessarily plan on buying and I always say like if you go in with no plan and if you go in with the intention of I'm just gonna see what they have it's like what do you think is gonna happen like of course and listen I'm not saying that that's like if it's not a problem to you like if you don't care about that and that's not a problem to you and you're not trying to shop less and you're not trying to spend less and you don't care fine knock yourself out right like I don't care but if if you are someone who you're like I'm trying to save more I'm trying to spend less I'm trying to be more disciplined with my spending it's even the mindset going into it right like people are like how do I just go into a Costco and stick to my list I'm like 90 of it happens before you even step foot in the store it's all about your mindset like if you have the mindset going into it of this is my list this is all I'm gonna get I'm gonna get what I came for and I'm gonna come out you're much more likely to actually have success than if you're like I'm just gonna see what they have right like let's just see right like yeah because I mean of course it's like of course when you go in with that mindset you're gonna see this over here and this over here this over here and again it's like Costco smart like they know like when you go to Costco for your five dollar rotisserie chicken right that's like it they they call it like a loss leader that's a loss leader for them which is something that they intentionally sell at a loss and that's why the rotisserie chickens are always in the back and you have to walk to the very back of the store and you have to walk through all of this stuff that they know that you're gonna see and they know you're gonna put it into their and put into your cart because they are happy to lose money on the rotisserie chicken that they know that like most people that go to Costco end up picking up one of those they're happy to lose money on that when they know that through walking like all the way to the back and then all the way back up to the front you're probably gonna put an extra 20 30 50 worth of stuff in your card that you wouldn't have otherwise I haven't been to Costco so I I'm actually not a Costco member either I've just been told this yeah yeah yeah but I totally like yeah I get like they they will get you on that even just like the cute like aesthetic displays will get you but yeah what you were saying is like when you set the intention like I'm just gonna see that's exactly what you're going to do like you're priming your brain to do something right but instead of you affirm yourself this is all that I'm gonna get sometimes when I know I'm like oh I'm going to Target and I'm not in a good mindset I will ask my husband Adam do you want to come with me because I want to get it I want to get out of there faster and he'll come with me and we'll just do our grocery shopping together uh and again that's like a little buffer for me oh it's accountability it's brilliant yeah exactly too but yeah because Target will definitely get you and sometimes I'll just go to the intention like I am gonna walk because I want to get more absent so I'm going to walk to Target but I'm not going to buy anything the purpose of my target trip is to walk yeah is to walk is to get the steps in and that's so I have like a different goal and so that helps buffer the like what is it like the enticing things that it offers you know yeah exactly exactly so and I think too it's like practicing this is like just practicing discipline because I think a lot of us like a big part about spending and discipline with our spending is a lot of us are again program especially as women are programmed to think about it like it's just something ingrained in our identity and it's just who we are as a person so you'll hear hear people say this a lot like oh well I'm just a shopper right like I'm the spender my husband's the saver I'm a shopper like I once had a client tell me you don't understand like shopping is in My DNA and I'm like I don't think it is I don't think so you know what I mean but it's like that's how we're programmed to think about and to talk about shopping and also discipline right discipline we talk about discipline like it's a personality trait like hi I'm Paige I'm five five I have blue or blue eyes blonde hair and I'm disciplined or I'm not disciplined right it's like discipline and your spending habits is actually something that you work on they're both a skill spending is a skill and discipline is a skill and so for you it's like every time you go to Target and you're like I'm just gonna walk I'm not gonna buy anything every single time that you do that and you're successful in that it's like you're proving to yourself you're like you're building that spending skill you're building that disciplined muscle of saying like I said I was gonna do this thing and I did it right like giving your brain pieces of evidence that like I can tell myself that I'm gonna do something I can decide something ahead of time and I have the discipline to do that that's something we have to practice and it's something that we have to like show ourselves evidence of that we can that we can do it so every time you do that that you're you're practicing that it's a skill you have to cultivate that skill it doesn't just like okay I'm done right habits are endless there are things that were they're continuous there's this quote from James clear and he says like every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become and that's what I always remind myself like is this action like is it going towards the vote of the person that I want to become or is it going to a past version of myself that I'm I don't necessarily want to cultivate you know and that has helped me I love that book Atomic habits is great and if you're looking for a good like book on habits Atomic habits is is good right so yeah it's just like it's a skill it's gonna take time and especially like I call it your spending self-concept right it's how you think about yourself in terms of money wealth and spending money and many women especially those who are struggling with their spending habits when we really start diving into it comes out that they have a spending self-concept that's not serving them because I'm sure like you you know this and kind of from this our brains are always working to confirm our beliefs because that's just how our brain is wired to work our brain wants to be our brain craves certainty and it craves being right about things and so your brain is constantly going to be working to confirm what it believes to be true so when your brain believes I'm a shopper I'm a spender I always blow it I can't be trusted with money I always spend every penny that I make it's kind of like well what do you think is going to happen then your brain is going to live into that and is going to make it true which the tricky part about that is like that happens and then when you do that you're giving your brain more evidence to support the belief and then your brain's like C C here's all this evidence that confirms my beliefs belief and then the belief just becomes even more deeper rooted in US and so you know I always kind of break my work down into kind of like two areas we have like the quick fixes which is a lot of things we talked about today the things I want to buy list you know placing barriers in place to kind of like limit your triggers and all of those things are great and they're a fantastic place to start but also like there's so much mindset work and psychology and like emotional work that has to happen with your spending habits that a lot of us don't even realize it's there like we we don't even realize that like our mindset plays such a huge piece into it or like our emotions play such a huge piece into it so there's like the quick fixes and then there's like the deeper work that ultimately has to be done and it can be done with a therapist you know I can help you with that but don't just think I just like always like to kind of put this out there is like if you try some of the quick fixes and you still find yourself impulse shopping or not nailing it 100 of the time first of all that's completely fine and totally normal right progress over Perfection every day of the week but also just realize that like there's deeper things going on as well at play with it which again with money we don't really think about because we're like it's money it's math it's black and white it's like no no there is there's so much emotions that are underneath the surface of it all and it definitely will require some you know deeper work and like you said seeking help is the best thing that one can do I have a final question for you and that is what what do you think is one thing that you wish people would talk about more that isn't talked about enough oh my gosh that's such a good question well I wish that I saw more people talk about on social media just debunking the Smith of what we believe is like more is better like the more you have and the newer it is and the shinier it is and that sort of thing like the happier you'll be or the more fulfilled or the more status you'll have that sort of thing that's just it's a it's the fundamental message of consumer culture that we live our lives in which is more is better and the reality is is like all of us with our spending our spending is going to have a law of diminishing returns which means that you're spending up until a certain point will increase your levels of happiness and fulfillment because you know it's like you're going to use your spending and your money to just like meet your basic needs right like make sure you have like a roof over your head and clothing and stuff like that you're gonna buy yourself some wants and maybe even some luxuries but spending past that point of enoughness and sufficiency will actually start to bring it back down and so I think it's just I wish I saw people talk about more especially like all the influencers and stuff that you see on social media who from like the outside looking in their lives look so great and so perfect and so aspirational and so beautiful right like to your point they have all the organizational bins or they have all the ice cube trays and you know they have 20 different types of ice cubes and like all this sort of stuff just talking more about the message of I have all this stuff and from the outside looking in my life looks pretty amazing but it's not the stuff that makes me happy because I think that's just the the pit that we've fallen into on social media is like we see all these people who look so happy and so confident and so fulfilled and we um we automatically assume it's because of all the stuff that they have and it's not right it's just like the stuff is never going to be able to deliver that to you ultimately what you want it to deliver to you so I wish I just saw more people like being open about that you know what I mean because I think if they did like I don't know I think if they did it would just save a lot of a lot of people watching them a lot of hard I think we would stop chasing what other people have and we would definitely practice more gratitude and be more present right I think yeah but it's definitely tough because there's so I mean you you mentioned it earlier there are so many social factors that contribute to why our spending skills are not cultivated or you know are taught to do healthier behaviors because how can we when we're in a in a system that literally like thrives on this like thrives on us you know acting the way we're acting and seeing people and you know like this and yeah that's definitely a a topic that I would love to continue exploring and it gives me new intention to also be intentional about sharing about those things The Not So tangible things that make me happy because I don't think we talk about that enough Paige it has been lovely to have you if someone wants your support your guidance where can they find you give us all the details thank you for having me this has been so fun so on all social media channels my handle is overcoming underscore overspending so Instagram Tick Tock YouTube I have a podcast of my own so if you are looking for a good money podcast where we just solely talk about money in a very like fun shame-free judgment-free way my podcast is called the money love podcast and then like I said I also have a group coaching program that's called overcoming overspending so if this conversation like resonated with you today and you're like yes this is definitely an area that I need help with you can join my group coaching program it's a it's a membership so you pay monthly for it but I kind of say it's kind of like a gym membership but for your money and we specifically talk all things about like okay once you get the money from that point forward right so we talk about budgeting debt we talk about your spending habits but we also talk a ton and mostly about a lot of like the mindset stuff the emotional work that we've done today so if you've tried a lot of things in the past that haven't worked and you're kind of feeling like why isn't this working things keep falling through the cracks it could be because you need to touch on that mindset and that emotional piece so we do group coaching calls every single week you get private calls with me for one-on-one support So if you are interested in checking that out and you want to see what it's all about you can go to overcomingoverspending.com that'll give you all the details for that thank you so much for being here yeah so fun yeah foreign

Channel: Monica Denais

Views: 15,316

Keywords: therapist, mental health counselor, monica denais, texas therapist, dallas therapist, paige pritchard, spending coach, impulsive buying, emotional spending, impulsive shopping, podcasts for females

Id: x4uicmPwZTU

Length: 66min 53sec (4013 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023