How to avoid retail therapy
Are you the type that shops to escape negative feelings? Are you engaging in what psychologists call retail therapy? It’s a habit that has a serious effect on your finances. It’s an itch to shop that in most cases leads to buying things that you may not need. When you feel the urge to engage in retail therapy, use these tips and you may save yourself a lot of money:
Self-checking is the first step towards preventing retail therapy. It involves acknowledging that there is a problem and attempting to solve it. When you feel a deep urge to shop, stop and ask yourself some questions. Tune in to what you are feeling, this process will provide an alternative and you’ll deal with issues at hand instead of escaping them. Self-checking can be more effective if we have:
Acknowledged and labeled the feeling
Although it’s hard to resist the urge to shop, given the level of advertisements, our culture is structured in a way that makes us want more and in most cases, better things. It’s important to try and understand what could be triggering the habit, is it deprivation in our childhood, are we doing it to avoid issues or some negative feelings? When we acknowledge the problem and name it we will have begun the healing process.
Spending positively
It’s not bad to reward yourself for your hard work, but in doing that we should ensure that the reward compares well to the effort we have put into its accomplishment. We should at all costs avoid overcompensating ourselves.
Understand and be aware of the important things
You need to understand that there are things in your life which are more important than others, you need to set priorities. If you find that some of the things you have prioritised in life are making it hard to meet some of your more important goals in life, it means that you need to re-evaluate your shopping habits, look at the big picture and allocate more to these things.
A self-check and acknowledgement of the emotions that drive you to retail therapy will help in curing this problem. Go through the process and come up with the appropriate figure to spend.
Disclaimer: The above information is general in nature and not intended to be financial advice. You should consider seeking professional advice before following any suggestions in this blog/website.