How Your Emotions Affect Your Finances

If you’ve never considered how your emotions affect your finances, it’s time that you did.  It could make a big difference in how you spend and save money.

Your Emotions and Actions

Your emotions are directly related to your actions.  When you are angry, you may do something physical to relieve the tension you feel.  When you are happy, you may feel like you can take on the world and nothing really matters at that point in time because life is grand.  While both of these emotions are opposite, they can both have the same action, impulse buying.

Emotional Buying

Emotional buying is impulse buying.  When you are stressed out or angry, you may go to the mall or store so that you can buy something that will make you feel better.  When you are happy or excited, you may not think about the debt you are in or how you shouldn’t really save the rest of your paycheck because life at the moment is as good as it gets.  You don’t want to think about the repercussions of spending, so you do it and don’t think about it. The problem comes when the bills start coming in.

How to Control Emotional Buying

If you tend to shop during heightened emotions, you may need to start taking precautions so you don’t put yourself in financial hardship because of it.  Here are some tips to follow if you are an emotional buyer:

• Take credit cards out of your purse or wallet and place them somewhere that you will have to go out of your way to get.  This way you won’t find yourself driving home from work stressed out and just stopping off at the store for some shopping because you won’t have your credit cards with you.

• Find a shopping buddy to do all your shopping with.  This can be your spouse or friend.  You need someone you trust and whom you will listen to if he/she tells you that you don’t need to buy a particular item.

• Give yourself an allowance and forget about credit cards entirely.  If you have a problem with maxing out credit cards, get rid of them and only use cash.  Using cash ensures that you don’t put yourself in debt because you can only use what you have.

• Do something else physical rather than shopping when you are emotional.  List some things that you can do the next time you have a heightened emotion and refer to it when you feel yourself wanting to shop.

Do you suffer from emotional buying?  How do you handle it or not handle it?

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamoteus/)

June 5th, 2009 by Marcelina Hardy | Posted in Debt Management | (0)