OVER SHOPPING AN ADDICTION : What tips can you recommend to people who consistently overshop or spend beyond their means? Be a private eye around your buying behavior. Identify the cues or triggers that lead to overshopping or overspending, e.g. a bad day at work, a fight with a spouse, feeling lonely, bored, or in need of reward, free time, or the holidays perhaps. Look for patterns and connections. It’s important to realize that shopping is an equal opportunity, all purpose mood changer, but works only temporarily. After a short while, your mood will often dip even below where it was before you shopped because now the guilt and the remorse are added to it. Look at the consequences of your overshopping. In what areas of your life is it costing you? Financially? Emotionally? Socially? Occupationally? Spiritually? Choose someone in your life to be a Shopping Support Buddy and brainstorm together about how that person will support you to stop. Write down everything you spend and assign each expenditure a score, based on how necessary you deem it to be, from 0=entirely unnecessary, to 1/3=a little necessary, to 2/3=very necessary to 1, essential. At the end of the week, look at how many of your purchases you rated entirely or relatively unnecessary and then you’ll see how much you could save if you were only buying things that were more necessary rather than less. Take control of your cues by avoiding them altogether, or limiting your exposure. If Bloomingdales is a cue, guess where you don’t go? Also build in a pause between your impulse to buy and your actual buying behavior. During the pause, ask yourself: a. Why am I here? b. How do I feel? c. Do I need this? d. What if I wait? e. How will I pay for it?
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 11:03:30 +0000
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