Understand your spending decisions

Understand your spending decisions.What pulls your trigger?

Do you ever feel triggered? Do you ever find yourself spending money you didn’t intend, but you do it anyway or in a way that is not aligned to your goals?
Everyone overspends (at least sometimes if not more often than they should). If you can think about WHY you spent the way you did, you’re less likely to fall into that trap again. Knowing your spending triggers can help avoid being triggered in the first place and better able to analyze your over spending when it does happen. Yes, you can actually use overspending as a personal growth experience!

Here are four kinds of triggers:

Emotional State Trigger: Many of us overspend if we are emotionally triggered. It can be similar with eating. If we just had an awful fight with our partner, we may turn to food to make us feel better or we may spend money to feel better. Sometimes we spend when we are feeling a little blue, overworked or stressed. We feel like buying something to lift our spirits. Sometimes we spend when we feel deserving. We want to reward ourselves for our promotion, new job or payout receivred. What about you? In what emotional state are you most likely to overspend? If you name it, you can come up with some alte
atives before that feeling hits you.

Situational Trigger: Sometimes it doesn’t matter what emotional state we’re in. We know that when we go shopping with our friend, we tend to overspend. Or we may notice that whenever we are kid-free, we head for retail therapy. Some situations just lend themselves to overspending. Free time with no plans – days off, weekends without the kids, holidays or in between jobs are easy situations for overspending. Once identified key is to plan you free time.

Location Trigger: Some places trigger, no matter how you’re feeling. Certain places just seem designed to suck money out of your wallet. The number one is the ‘Sale’ locations “limited time offers” lurk. If you are trying to be careful with your spending, it may be best to stay away from certain locations, unless you’ve got a solid plan for how you want to spend your money.

Bio Trigger: People tend to spend more when they are hungry, tired, stressed or short of time. When shopping you get a bit “fuzzy” and power, throwing money at things instead of stopping to take care of yourself first.

Understanding your triggers is a step towards gaining some degree of conscious control of your psychological state of mind. Each of us lives within continuum of different states of mind, such as calm relaxation, reflective thinking, focused alertness, worried and emotional stimulation. We enter and exit these states fluidly and intuitively seeking whichever state is most conducive to the task at hand, from alertness of business endeavors to relaxation for sleep. To make effective money decisions we need to slip into an optimum state of mind; along with having consistency, clarity and a game plan.

So what about you? What your triggers? What state of mind are you when you are making significant money decisions?

We all have our triggers. Name yours.