May 13 2008
Impulsivity and money management, HA!
When I was twenty-one I was give a hundred dollar bill and sent to Target with the warning that is was the last hundred dollars we would have for a week.
While in Target I shopped. I took a basket and impulsively started putting things in it with at looking at price tags.
I was supposed to be getting soap and shampoo; I remember this because when I returned home I had forgotten both the soap and the shampoo.
I had, however, and array of candles, a new shirt, and a toy that had delighted me from the baby isle. Twenty-one and I was still fascinated with the bells and whistles meant to intrigue very young babies.
In addition, I had spent over ninety-one dollars.
Money management is still something I struggle with on a daily basis. Using a check card does not help matters for me because I am often oblivious to what the total is anyhow, unless I have to count out the cash.
Then I still make mistakes, coming up a dollar short or giving the wrong amount of change, and it is embarrassing when I show up with too much merchandise and not enough dough.
There are two problems here: First, I am impulsive and this flows over into shopping. I find it almost impossible to leave a store with just the things on my list. Moreover, if I do not have a list you can bet I will not be coming back with all of the things I went for in the first place and a whole bunch that should have never made the basket. Second, I am all but conscious when it comes to money. The ability to enter a pin number or to sign a receipt complicates this further as I am likely to overdraw my account.
I am working on it though and literally have taken myself back into the store to return items that I impulsively bought. I try to pay attention to the price of every item I pick up and decide based on budget if I buy it or not. I try not to buy anything not on my list and I never go to the store with out a cell phone by myself so I can bounce my impulse buys off someone else, at least in theory.
