How to Stop Spending Money impulsively Today!

If you want to know how to stop spending money impulsively you have to recognize when you are falling into the retailers trap.

Here try this..

Answer these questions as honestly as you can. If you need to ask a friend or someone else close to you for their perspective, then do it. Because the only way to fix an impulsive spending addiction is to come to grips with it. To recognize what the triggers are that cause you to not know how to stop spending money on things you don’t need.

So here we go…

1.) Does your partner complain that you are always spending too much money?

2.) Are you often surprised when your credit card bills arrive at just how much more you spent than you thought that you had?

3.) Do you have more “stuff” than you could ever need? I not asking if you are a hoarder here, but do you have clothes in your closet that you have never worn and forgot you had?

4.) Do you own every new gadget on the market? Aka, do you find yourself camping out in those lines on the news with other “fanatics” before a product has even hit the stores shelf?

5.) Do you find yourself suddenly desperate to buy things you didn’t even know you wanted until you saw them in a store, commercial or your neighbors hand?

If you find yourself answering yes to any of these questions, you are a candidate for being an impulse spender or at the minimum indulge in “retail therapy” and you need to focus on how to stop spending money on things that you don’t need.

As someone trying to get out of debt, impulse spending defeats the goals you need to be working toward. When you are spending too much money outside of your plan (ie. budget), it obviously  prevents you from saving for the important things that ARE in your financial plans like a house, a new car, a vacation or retirement.

The only way to resist spending money on items that really don’t matter in the long run is to keep your focus on the more important long term financial goals.

And even worse than spending money you don’t have and going deeper into debt, impulse spending also will derail your relationships too.

And to overcome the problem?

You MUST learn to distinguish clearly between your needs and your wants.

It’s funny because as easy as that sounds, it just isn’t. Advertisers constantly blitz us with their “must have” products 24 hours a day. The trick to beating them at their own game is to give yourself a “cooling-off” period before you buy anything that you have not planned for.

At least for me, if I can hold off long enough to get out of the store, the desperation I feel for the new whizy-ma-bob, usually subsides enough for clearer thinking to prevail. So figuring out how to stop spending money is a short term problem that I can easily solve by removing myself from the situation.

If you just can’t stop yourself, then when you go shopping, make a detailed list and only take enough money to pay for what is on your shopping list.

Of course you have to leave your credit cards at home or it defeats the purpose. That little sliver of plastic will conspire against you with that awesome whizy-ma-bob.

And that is the simple plan of how to stop spending money impulsively! Now, what are some ways you hold back from buying everything in site?

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