Impulse Shopping: A Cure for This Buying Disease

Impulse Buying is one of the leading causes of death for the American bank account and pocketbook. Although the pocketbook mortality rate is high, there is a cure for Impulse Buying. Careful planning, when taken with the help of family and friends supporting the Impulse Buyer, can cure Impulse Buying.

Impulse Buying is a habit, but it's breakable. Shopping is a fact of life, though how much we shop is entirely up to us. We go to the mall, department store, or grocery store. Before leaving the house, had you made out a plan for what you were going shopping for? Did you already have an amount of money planned and set aside for purchases, an amount not to go past? Was your mind already made up not to buy anything but exactly what you planned upon? If the answers are "no," then chances are you will end up Impulse Buying before you get back home.

The Symptoms of the Impulse Buyer
You leave home, intending just to go buy some groceries, but on the way to the store, you have to drive past the shopping mall. You decide on the spur of the moment to go "window" shopping in the mall. As you walk through the halls, enticing displays from the stores catch your eye, and you feel almost driven to check them out. Two hours later, you walk out of the mall carrying bags of items that cost you $200.

After the mall trip, you head on over to buy groceries. You had in your mind what you intended to purchase, and therefore did not make out a list. As you walk up and down the isles, items catch your attention, and you put some of those into the shopping cart, thinking this cannot really hurt anything. After all, the munchies sure do sound good and you have to eat. You come out with lots more groceries than you meant to get, spending $150 rather than the $70 you'd planned on.

Now you are hungry, having been gone hours longer than you anticipated. So you go through the local drive through and get lunch. You give the Fast Food Spot $15 and head for the house.