Many people spend money to make themselves feel better but spending money you didn’t budget for could leave you even more frustrated, which starts a cycle of emotional spending. So how can you stop yourself from emotional buying?

1. Budget for it
A good budget takes into consideration miscellaneous spending, leaving room to still feel like you’re enjoying your money. If you don’t budget for ‘unplanned’ spending, you’ll forever wonder how it’s possible that you run out of money before the end of the month.

All human beings have wants, you just need to budget for them. Try the 50/30/20 way of budgeting: 50% goes towards your needs, 30% goes towards your wants and 20% to your savings and investments.

2. Leave your cards at home
When you do window shopping – and everyone does at some time – leave all your credit, cheque and debit cards at home. This is the best way to avoid the temptation of buying something you didn’t include in your budget. If you have these cards on you, you’ll find a way to talk yourself into buying something.

There’s a shocking statistic that spending R27,40 per day that you can’t account for equals R10 000 a year. If you decided to save R30 a day, in 12 months you will have built a nice holiday fund.

3. Practise the five-day rule
Shopping online is easy and convenient and while your intention might be to just browse, before you know it, you’re at the checkout spending thousands of rands.

The solution to impulsive online shopping is to practise the five-day rule. This rule says that you must leave all items in your shopping cart for five days before checking out and paying. After five days, you might realise that you already have something similar and don’t need those items.

4. Set clear and inspiring financial goals
Defining your goals will help you to focus on your end goal. For example, if your goal is to become debt-free, make a list of who you owe and how much, review your budget and decide where you can cut back and save, and use that money to pay off the debt.

Work out the exact date by which each debt will be paid off and write it down. Every time you want to make an impulsive purchase, having SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based) goals will help you stay on track.

5. See the big picture
If your SMART goal is to grow your money by starting to invest, letting go of an impulse purchase will allow you to do just that. Sacrificing instant gratification will give you far greater gratification later.

It’s not always easy to stop yourself from buying something you want, so you’ll have to be aware of your triggers (which emotions make you want to buy) and think about your financial goals. If you can do this, it will make it much easier to choose delayed gratification over instant gratification.

This article originally appeared in Today magazine, Issue 1 2021. Read our latest issue here.