Taming Impulse Purchases...Staying on Course Toward Your Goal

I love Amazon for many reasons. I love their one day manager specials (I still remember my best deals, like organic lollipops for less than 3 cents each, for last Halloween!), I love subscribe &save and the deals they have on organic and allergy-friendly foods. But more than anything, I love them for taming impulse spending.

Saving money with coupons is not saving money, if coupons drive you to buy things you would not normally buy or spend money on. When a coupon lures you in for something you didn't need before, you have been had. I look at coupons as affording my family luxury items that I would love for us to have, but realistically we don't need (yogurt, frozen organic vegetables, whole grain crackers, cold cereal, cheese). If we bought wholly unprocessed food, well, there are very few coupons for those types of foods and our grocery bill would be within our budget without any trying.

I try to do most of my shopping just one day per week. This cuts down on overall purchasing and lessens the gimmes if shopping with children. The gimmes add up. Especially if you participate in them while going shopping hungry. This one day shopping doesn't always work, but this is my goal. Piper knows this as my "coupon shop day" and she knows that excellent behavior from myself and her results in an extra special visit to a bounce play (with a coupon, $3), a playground we don't normally visit or something along those lines. She is an active participant in finding the matching item on the coupon, reading numbers on the coupon and we talk about prices. She knows luxury items (i.e. all processed food) ideally should be on sale with a coupon or at least with a coupon or we delay a purchase. She does enjoy this and often instructs her stuffed animals on how to save money while shopping.  I think doing this more than once a week would ruin the novelty.

Every time you enter a store, you have a chance to waste money, detracting you from your goal. Mine, typically, is travel. Pre-child and husband, I spent more than 50% of my salary on travel and yet was still able to save money and live comfortably, debt-free. In Peace Corps, I banked 2/3 of my living allowance for travel. If I recall correctly, it was roughly $6-7/day. Realistically, we won't spend 50% of Kevin's salary on travel. We can't! But every bit we save brings us closer to a new and exciting destination.

Amazon's wish list feature is one of my favorite tools for curbing impulse spending. Every time I feel I want a book, something for Piper, something for Kevin, something for the house, something as a present for someone...I simply put it in our wishlist (you can add things from any website--while I'm out, I'll make a note of what I want and add it once I come home). When a holiday comes up, I can look at the list and decide what we can afford, what still looks good, what would be a perfect present or what I can delete. And typically I can delete (or get from the libary) half the things on the list. If I've done well that month with spending, and we have saved an appropriate amount, if extra bills haven't crept up (car repair, tree limb trimming, etc), then I will look over my list and might consider a few things, but typically by then, the urge has passed and we have banked more in savings. I urge you to try this wish list feature. Try buying only what you truly need and wish list the rest this month. It is shocking how much you can save. And you are that much closer to your goal.