The Vault with Financielle - UNLOCKED: How to Stop Impulse Spending & Save More Money

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Send us a text💸 Welcome to The Vault Unlocked – a special bonus series of The Vault Podcast, where we deep dive into the big money topics no one wants to talk about.Today, we’re tackling impulse spending—because let’s be real, we’ve all been there. That late-night scroll, the dopamine rush of hitting “buy,” and the regret that follows when you check your bank balance. But impulse spending isn’t just about willpower—it’s psychological, emotional, and even designed to happen.Here’s what we’re unlocking in this episode:Why impulse spending happens (hint: it’s not just bad self-control)The brain’s reward system and how companies exploit it to make you spend moreHow retail therapy became glamorized—and why it’s so hard to break the cycleThe real cost of impulse spending (it’s more than just money)Proven strategies to take back control, from no-spend challenges to sinking fundsThis episode will help you break the habit, keep more money in your pocket, and spend intentionally—without feeling deprived.💬 Have a topic you’d love us to unlock next? Email us at [e-mail]👉 Subscribe to Financielle for honest conversations about money, and let’s rewrite your money story together.The Vault is an entertaining yet thought provoking podcast that answers our community’s dilemmas and confessions surrounding women and money.Visit https://www.financielle.com to download our app.Watch the podcast on YouTube.Follow Financielle for more:▶︎ TikTok▶︎ InstagramAbout Financielle:Financielle is a female focussed finance app helping women to take back control of their money, ditch debt, increase savings and invest in their future.Recorded and Produced by Liverpool Podcast Studios▶︎ Web ▶︎ Instagram▶︎ LinkedIn

Welcome to The Vault Unlocked, where I take a deep dive into money topics that no one wants to talk about. So today we're getting real about a behaviour that impacts most of us all, may have done at some point in our lives. And that's impulsive spending. You know that feeling that adding something to a shopping cart online and getting that dopamine hit immediately, it might be clicking on an ad, a link from your favorite influencer. It could be sports equipment, it could be beauty, it could be outfits, it could be interiors. It could be food and delivery and just wanting something quickly.

And it impacts so many of us in lots of different ways. And it's something that can really impact our money journey. In fact, for lots of people, it has totally hampered it. It's put us backwards. It's made us feel guilty. It's made us feel stressed. It's actually negatively impacted our mental health, even after initial positive uplift. We've all been there where you click buy and add to basket.

And often, even before the package has arrived or the clothes have been put away in the wardrobe, we feel guilty. We do that cycle where suddenly we feel regret and we see the money go out our account and it's just another thing that we've bought. Here's the thing though, impulsive spending is not just about poor self-control. It's so much more deeper than that. It's emotional, it's psychological. It's literally designed to happen. Companies want you to spend impulsively

and they have built an entire system designed to make you do so. So by the end of this episode, you'll not only understand why you might keep spending impulsively or why someone in your life might be spending impulsively, but also actionable steps to take back control because this is not all your fault. Now you might be the problem or you might be a big part of the problem, but other

people are too. This is about working smarter, not harder, to keep your money where it belongs, in your hands. Over the past few years, Holly and I have been so blessed at Fire and Shell to speak to so many of you about your lives, about your realities, about your struggles, about what you kind of try to achieve in life, and more importantly, what's stopping you from doing that. And impulsive spending is one of the leading causes of like a budget derailment or credit card debt

being run up or not hitting certain goals. Instant spending has become completely normalized in our society. I want you to picture a couple of different examples of where this happens because years ago, pre-social media, this would be like the Saturday shopping trip. People would go to the high street,

they would go shopping and you'd go for a browse and you would try things on and then you would buy things that you never intended buying. Like you just were going shopping, were going shopping. And that was the decade ago version of impulsive spending. So there was still like quite a few steps involved because you had to literally decide to go shopping. You had to actually go.

You had to actually go into the different shops and maybe try something all picks things up and browse and decide what you were taking. But that was a form of impulsive spending. There are so many different possible scenarios now. I was thinking about this last night. You have the doom scrolling in bed on like Instagram and every third story is an ad with a clickable

link that is tracked within an inch of its life to find you. In fact, you were probably targeted with the ad in the first place, so you might have been talking about rugs or you might have clicked on a few different influencer stories that got new rugs and lo and behold, a rug advert would appear completely designed to target you in that way at that moment with that image tested on millions of people before you. And before you know it, you have seamlessly clicked through

to a shopping basket with a rug and it's on its way. In fact, TikTok shop is a big one, isn't it? You can now on social media, literally check out, literally buying the thing that you've just seen someone use. You go from seeing someone use it, let's pretend it's a nice like planner or a book and pad or something. You see someone using it and you're like,

that will help me achieve exactly what this person is. QV seeing me, you're selling to me, this dream, this dream of being organized, I need that book and pen, I need that planner. And within the social media platform, you can check out and have that item delivered immediately. Before you went on that scroll session, you did not picture coming away with a planner, but you impulsively bought it

because it was made so easy for you to do that. Another example is influencer lifestyle. You know, someone could be wearing this like really cool gym set and you really wanna get fit this year and it's matching, it's aesthetic and hands up, I am a person that when I look good in the gym and when I've got an outfit on that I like, I do feel I probably perform a little bit better

than if I've got last year's kit on. It is in our nature to, it's really, really hard to, you know, switch off, especially when influencers show, I've got this new set and makes feel really good. And so before you know it, you've clicked their, you know, affiliate link and gone down a rabbit hole of buying that and having it delivered so you can up your performance in the gym.

It could also be the food situation. You have got these delivery apps right at your fingertips and you haven't quite planned your meals out or you don't really fancy the healthy thing in the fridge and you could just immediately order something on these delivery apps and get something yummy, yummy and delicious delivered to your door. That is also impulsive spending, it's impulsivity.

There's like a difference between spontaneity and impulsivity, so let's caveat all of this with, there is nothing wrong with spur of the moment purchases and spontaneity and let's do something that we didn't plan. You don't have to plan everything, but there's a way that you can pay for all that and it not be this repeated ill thought out behavior that dramatically impacts our financial progression.

And this is so common, majority of us have done this. A study showed actually that 84% of all shoppers have made an impulse purchase, a purchase that was not thought out, that was not planned, that was not mindful. It was just immediately there and then. I bet, and I don't have the answer to this, that a lot of impulsiveness comes from like a deal.

Do you know like a 50%, 30% last 10 remaining kind of urgency. I mean, everyone knows it's a sales tactic, but in the moment it's really hard to see that in its, for what it is. So yeah, maybe sales have a big impact on the volume or the timing of impulsive purchases. Now we get asked at financial about impulsive spending a lot.

The team have done a lot of research over the years into how impulsive spending works and how it like literally impacts our budget. So whilst we are not psychologists, there is an awful lot of factual data out there that we want to constantly share with you so that you can be armed with the facts and so that you can go away and build

your own personal strategies to kind of counteract it. But this is some of the stuff that we found. So when it comes to the psychology of impulsive spending, the brain is wired for immediate gratification. I feel like a lot of us could relate to that. There's a significant role that dopamine plays in decision-making. Dopamine is literally the brain's

feel-good neurotransmitter. It's the thing that gives us that buzz and that joy. It's specifically released when we anticipate or when we receive a reward. I'm now picturing like puppies in treats and training. Are you picturing that? That's what I'm picturing. When you see an item you want, your brain releases dopamine. It creates a surge of excitement. Now, if we take that one step further, the act of actually buying something, it becoming yours, especially something new or unexpected, gives an even bigger dopamine hit,

reinforcing the behavior and then becoming a habit. The habit is formed and you wanna feel that buzz again and again and again. We have this complete reward cycle now, don't we? We have see, want, buy, reward. See, want, buy, reward. The brain's reward system is heavily biased towards the present.

It's called literally a present bias. This is why saving up or investing for the long term for the future sometimes doesn't feel as, I don't know, exciting or we're not as motivated to do that. We're not as incentivized to do that versus if we literally want to buy something, you know, that can literally appear the next day or in our hands immediately, or that is literally present bias. When you think about how instant a lot of our purchases are nowadays as well, you overlay that on this concept

of the dopamine hit and the present bias. There is so little friction in the spending system. Friction slows us down. Removing friction from processes makes them slicker, makes them easier, the least path of resistance. One of the best retailers for this, and they were one of the leaders, is Amazon. Companies like Amazon have invested millions

and millions of pounds into making their processes slick and removing friction, especially from buying processes. They have made shopping feel like an effortless, easy, passive process. Everything has been deliberately streamlined. Amazon have teams upon teams upon teams that work on buttons and clicks and colors and different user journeys. Think about what they've done to make your life easier. That whilst you accept it might be an improvement on

like a convenience level and a practical level, it's actually helped you spend more more easily. You've got one click buy which literally does what it says on the tin. There we go, I've clicked it. I now own the thing, it's coming to my house. We've got things like Prime membership, where they build in the cost of delivery to this monthly subscription, which draws you back to that platform

and makes you feel like the delivery is easier because you're not having to pay for delivery every time. It's one less like stoppage or blocker to that purchase. You've got the concept of saved cards. So you can just use your regular card. They've got your data. You can just go, yes, please, I'll take the item. You've got my details.

I don't need to go find my wallet or open my phone up. You know it already. The same or next day delivery concept gives you that instantaneous receipt of that good that you want, that product that you want to buy. So you can, you feel like you're going to get the satisfaction of receiving it much quicker than, oh, it's not going to come for four weeks.

I might not buy it. I mean, we've all done that before, or the delivery dates, not then. Nevermind. You've got things like the buy again suggestions, or if you liked this, you would have liked that. This is all data and algorithms designed to target you and make it easier to buy the next thing super quickly. I mean, Amazon have literally turned shopping into a game of speed.

How quickly can you, from buying the thing you want, receive it in your hand? And Amazon led the way, but everyone is doing this. They are targeting you with ads. They're chasing you with an email if you've abandoned the shopping cart saying, oh you forgot some things here's an extra discount. They're letting you use things like PayPal or Klan or even your decentralized payment accounts. In fact even on

that like buy now pay later is literally removing the friction for the buying process because you don't even have to have the funds to buy the thing. You can literally complete the shop and not have the funds. So I really want you to think about that. The old days used to buy things in cash, used to go to the bank and withdraw money and go into somewhere and you'd have to drive and park up and walk and find the shop and hope the thing was in stock and try it on and if it didn't like shit,

you could buy it and you hand it over cash and to hand, physically hand over something to someone like you've literally had to do work, you've literally had to give it to them. All that has gone, all that has gone. You can pay with your Apple Watch, you can pay it with your phone, like they're not daft. They've made it so easy for us to do this.

And so friction is a really important thing that I want you to consider when you might be on this like impulsive spending journey, you're trying to cut back a little bit, just your general buying, just have a little think about what things may improve my life and kind of may make things quicker for me. You know, I like that I can pay for things quickly

and I don't have to go find my card, but I'm mindful that it also helps someone else, the retailer, it doesn't just help me. When we think about shopping as well, four years, especially in the movies, the American movies has done it to us, retail therapy is a thing that's described. I would love to know more about where that term came from,

actually, retail therapy. When is buying stuff therapy? Like, surely it's the dopamine hit thing that we've been talking about, it helps you on some level, but it's not gonna solve your problem, it's not gonna be the thing that fixes you, but yet retail therapy has been glamorized. Let's be super clear, we can shop if we want to,

we are allowed to buy things if we want to, we just want to make sure we genuinely want them, we genuinely want them, it's, you know, you don't even have to need them, but do we even really want them? Is that the thing we want? And can we afford it? Because if we can't afford it, we need to save up until we can. But it's been glamorized to kind of, oh, I went crazy, I went crazy, I just bought loads, and I just didn't plan for any of it.

And oh, I put out my credit card, it's fine. It's kind of like, it's even like the smiled upon addiction, isn't it? It's like addiction to spending and wanting that dopamine card, it's fine. Ha ha ha, it's kind of like, it's even like the smiled upon addiction, isn't it? It's like addiction to spending and wanting that dopamine hit, that reward loop. But as many of us are aware, there's a cost to impulsive spending. And you know, that cost is not just the financial cost of buying something with money you didn't have

or that was meant for something else. It's the emotional side of impulsive spending. It's the buyer's remorse, the stress, the guilt. The rush of excitement is so quickly followed by these low feelings. Reality always hits and the thing that was so shiny and so new very quickly isn't shiny and isn't new. And I do think that's life and that we're gonna get that with some purchases like we've all been there when you're super excited about the thing and that doesn't even need to be an impulsive spend. It could just be something that you really wanted

and you're excited. If you've done that with an outfit, you were so excited about an outfit, an outfit, an outfit. And then even weeks later, you go, why was I so bothered? Like, what, what? And it was just all fakes. It was like excitement and rushes of chemicals.

And why was I, why did I, I don't even wanna wear it now. Like I just, I don't know what, this isn't even years later, this is weeks later. It's because it was built up to be something fake and magic when actually it just wasn't, it was impulsive. It was in the moment, it wasn't for the thing, it was for the rush of the thing. This impulsive spending though for lots of people

can spiral into a real financial issue, which in turn only causes more stress. Impulsive spending can sabotage money goals. It can make budgets redundant. You do all that planning and then you kind of blow out the water. Small purchases can really build up sneakily financially. I mean, 30 pounds a day is over 10,000 pounds a year.

So impulsive food spending, impulsive beauty spending, impulsive fashion spending, it can all add up. If you are someone who really struggles with impulsive spending and that's the thing derailing you, think about how much closer you could be to your goals if you could stop impulsive spending getting in your way. In fact, you might have hit your goals already if you could have tack stop impulsive spending getting in your way. In fact, you might have hit your goals already if you could have tackled impulsive spending a few years ago. But that is what we're here to do today. We are going to tackle impulsive spending.

Now you know how the systems work. You can at least know what to look out for, what to try and spot, what to avoid, what to be aware of when you're making spending decisions. First up, we're gonna look at our emotional triggers. This is because impulsive spending often stems from emotional triggers, not from logic, not from planning. By its very nature, it's not planning.

And so identifying the triggers that make you spend is the first step that you need to take on this journey. Actually, someone in the community a couple of weeks ago said, never shop when you're hungry, angry, lonely or tired. And I heard that, I thought that was so true. But the food example is a great example, where if you're going shopping on an empty stomach, your impulsivity and your need for a treat

and need for a dopamine hit is gonna absolutely overtake what is a measured, planned, budget-friendly, and maybe healthy approach to food shopping. It might be that stress causes your impulsive spending. Spending can really feel like an escape from life's troubles, from the troubles that you're facing just in that moment.

Some people stress eat, some people stress spend, some people stress drink, like this is very, very common. But in reality, what we know is it doesn't negate the stress and in fact, it can sometimes add more stress onto the situation because of the additional financial burden that impulsive spending brings. And just to note that if stress is one of the leading causes of your impulsive spending, it's really worth looking

into what can help you relieve stress. Is it journaling? Is it exercise? Is it fresh air? Is it early nights? Is it diet change? We're all different, stress impacts us in different ways,

but if that's the thing that's impacting your spending, then looking into those different things and finding something that works for you is something that could really help. It could be boredom. The big danger at the moment is you've got, if you don't have anything to do, you pick up your phone and you scroll,

and it's really, really hard, especially for those of us that work on our phones as well. It's the thing we do. If you get a moment, like often we're defaulting to the phone. I think that's the reason why lots of us are trying to deliberately cut back from phone usage.

But the problem with that boredom is we're being fed content that's designed, literally designed to get us to spend. And so having a little look at if boredom is your trigger and what you can do to overcome boredom instead of going to social media. Your impulsive spending might be to do with validation. It might boost your self-esteem.

You might feel like it increases your social capital with others. And so impulsive spending is what you do to maintain that validation. Again, you can see that ultimately, you're not gonna outspend that. You're never gonna fill that void. You unfortunately are gonna have to do the hard work

on you to work out why it is that you keep doing that to get extra validation. Why do you care what people think? Why aren't you more proud of yourself? Why are you not good enough with the things that you've got, wearing the things that you have, doing the things that you like to do? Whatever your specific emotional triggers

may be for impulsive spending, you have to connect with them. So go back through bank account statements and have a look when these spending incidents happen and what was the trigger? Was it boredom? Was it validation? Was it stress?

Was it something different? Like we've just mentioned a few, but there could be something different. What is causing your impulsive spending? Cause you have, there will be a pattern. There's almost always a pattern. When we've spoken to people about it, then they do the work and they look back.

And it could be multiple, like, you know, it's very, very common that there's more than one, but work out when it is and where it is and what it is, because that's when you can build an action plan deliberately designed to kill off that moment of weakness, that thing that keeps, we keep falling down on. And you can build a game plan once you know what you're dealing with.

So once we address the emotional triggers, there's another tip that we have in the financial community that you've probably heard before which is a no spend challenge. Now don't be scared of the no spend challenge, it's completely personal to you, it doesn't have to be scary, I promise, but it's something that you can use as a tool

to stop impulsive spending. It can help break that cycle. And because you know it's like for a defined period and it's not necessarily forever, it can be easier to stick to than suddenly saying, I am never buying on Amazon again, or I am never gonna buy something that I haven't planned. Because that's just not realistic.

And our brain doesn't like the idea of forever remember, we know present day bias. So if we can create a current challenge for the week, the month, the day, then we can really work on curbing those negative habits. A no-spend challenge is a set period where you commit to only buying the basic essentials, like food and bills and transportation.

And you can carve out exceptions like, oh, it's my friend's birthday on that day, so I'm gonna be going out for dinner and I'm gonna buy an outfit for it. Like that is planning ahead, it's my friend's birthday on that day, so I'm going to be going out for dinner and I'm going to buy an outfit for it. Like that is planning ahead, let's be clear. That's not like impulsive spending. You're planning on something. So you can carve out certain things, but once you know your own rules, you set them. It could be no unnecessary spending or you could like create your own personalized no

spend challenge that's deliberately designed to target your weak area. So it might be, I'm not doing Amazon for a whole month and I'm gonna see if I really need something I'm gonna work out how I'm gonna find it and go drive to buy the thing, go get it and it might have to wait a couple of days. But if Amazon's your thing, if you've got a real trigger happy finger on Amazon

and it's a problem for your budget, let's be very clear, this is where impulsive spending is not mindful, not helpful, and it's kind of taking down your other financial progress, then try that. It might be the cliche impulsive coffees. It might be that really you're not enjoying it, you're just getting it as a habit. Do you wanna save it for Friday and make it a treat again?

Or do you wanna spend five quid a time and have that bulk up over time and really hamper your budget? It might be that you keep buying things via Instagram, so it might be that you say to yourself, anything that I see either on Instagram or TikTok shop or from an influencer or whatever it is, I'm gonna write it down in a notes area on my phone,

and if I really want it after my no-spend challenge, I will buy it. And honestly, really want it after my no spend challenge, I will buy it. And honestly, every time we speak to people about this, the thing on the list almost never gets bought. It was an in the moment impulsivity. It was an in the moment desire. It wasn't something that they truly, truly wanted. So no spend challenges, super helpful for helping you

become aware of your spending habits. They really help you build discipline around spending that it's meant to be intentional, that it's meant to have a plan, it's not meant to be completely accidental. It also creates a pause between the impulse and the purchase, giving you time to decide if it truly is something that you wanna buy.

Now let's be super clear, we are allowed to spend. We are not saying you cannot spend. We don't want the rash, radical, impulsive, non-mindful, impulsive spending, but we like spending. We just like spending where it's been part of the plan. And so as we all know, sinking funds are pots of money that we build up for planned expenses. Our more typical ones are like a gift sinking fund

because we're gonna be giving gifts. A travel sinking fund because we know we like to travel. A car expenses sinking fund, because we're going to be giving gifts. A travel sinking fund, because we know we like to travel. A car expenses sinking fund, because we know that thing's going to need new stuff from time to time. And so we build these pots up and we don't need to use credit when that bigger purchase is needed.

So you could actually build an impulsive spending sinking fund. You could call it it, even name it that in the app. Because hilariously, if you have permission in the form of a sinking fund to impulsively spend, I predict that you will not spend it. Because it's not as fun, it's not as dopamine,

it's thought out, it's from a pot that's allowed. But if you do choose to spend from it, it didn't derail anything because it's there, it's not hijacked any other categories, it's there. The other thing though that you can do to combat impulsive spending is carve out space in the budget for spending. So even if it's not a sinking fund and a pot to the side,

what are you impulsive spending on? And if you have a budget, that spending can come from a category. Do you have a clothing fund? Do you have a fun fund? Do you have a fun fund? Do you have a coffees fund? Because if you don't have those categories in your budget, but you are impulsively spending on those things,

put them in your budget. Because again, the same thing as with the sinking funds, firstly, it's less exciting because it's in the budget already. So it's part of the plan. Secondly, it doesn't derail the wider budget and your money goes with your excess at the end because you have permission to do it. You've chosen some amounts that fit in with the wider

plan. But thirdly, you're more likely to cap that spending so even if some elements of it are impulsive in that you hadn't planned them out because they're allowed as part of a category and that category has a total to it, you're unlikely to go over that number. It's just as humans, we do tend to like boundaries. I know we're talking about breaking boundaries here, but when it's in the budget, if you have clothing, a hundred pounds, you're very unlikely in a month. If you generally following a budget to go and blow 200 on clothes, because

there's a hundred there, so you're allowed a hundred. So you're more likely to tailor your shopping and your spending to that hundred. Whereas if there's zero, if it's not in the budget at all, it kind of doesn't matter. Like is it 50 or is it 250? It really doesn't matter because that's where the chaos comes in and then not planning anything because it wasn't in there in the first place. But having these sinking funds or having categories in your budget for spending means that you have money for things that you value and removes the But having these sinking funds or having categories in your budget for spending means that you have money for things that you value and removes the need for

impulsive decisions. They literally give you control over your spending even during times of emotional triggers. Knowing that a purchase is already accounted for can really reduce that feeling of buyer's remorse. If you buy clothes using the clothing budget you will not have as high a buyer's remorse. If you buy clothes using the clothing budget, you will not have as higher buyer's remorse as if you just went freestyle. Stopping impulsive spending is not about depriving yourself. It is completely about valuing yourself.

We wanna be able to give you the tools to spend intentionally and align your spending with your money goals. We're only frugal here if you wanna be, but I think so many of us are sick and tired of our spending habits derailing our future plans, preventing us from hitting our money goals. And then quite frankly, ending up with a house full of stuff

that we just don't need or want. And so hopefully, if you are someone who does suffer from impulsive spending or is worried about suffering from it in the future, you can one, be like more eyes wide open about what the industry is doing designed to get you to spend, and so it's not all your fault and your willpower. But there are some strategies that you can use to navigate spending in a way that makes

it guilt free and makes it enjoyable, because spending can be enjoyable. I know we've talked about the dopamine hit, but it can be enjoyable, but it's much more enjoyable for a longer term. If you buy something that you absolutely want that you can actually afford. If you do think you need a little bit more help, because this is a very complex issue and all I've done is gone completely surface level is seek the right help that you need. If this is an addiction, we want you to get it sorted and looked after

properly by a medical professional so that you can move past that and move on with your life. Before I lock the vault, if you have any stories to share on this or on any of the topics, please do email us at thevaultfinancial.com. Maybe let us know a topic that you'd like to hear about next.

And just a disclaimer, the vault unlocked is a light hearted chat around life and money. We are not giving financial advice. Bye bye.