With midterms safely out of the way, you may feel like doing a little shopping. Unfortunately, staying on budget with a student’s salary is downright difficult—if not impossible. Here are some important steps to help make sure that your shopping trip doesn’t lead to disaster.
First of all, identify why you are shopping. If you are at the mall because you are bored or feeling down, get out quick! Emotional shopping, like emotional eating, releases serotonin, which makes you feel better after your shopping binge. Unfortunately, once your purchases are unwrapped and you tally up how much you owe, that happy-feeling often disappears.
Another way to ensure a pleasant shopping trip is to only shop for things that you need. Right now, I need a white blouse and some spring boots. When I go to the shops, I head straight to the blouse and boot section and don’t even consider stopping to look at jeans, accessories, or shoes. The idea of clothes shopping with a list works the same way that grocery shopping with a list does—you walk into the store knowing exactly what you need and you buy only that.
The key to buying “only what you need” is to learn to differentiate your wants from your needs. You need a new pair of shoes if they leak, but you want a new pair of gloves because “these black ones match my coat better.” By buying only the things that you need, you will spend less money and will be able to use your savings for things that are more important to you than new gloves.
Finally, shopping with a list for only the things that you need allows you to better control your money. If, on payday, you go shopping and spend, spend, spend, you will have a hard time paying rent once the first of the month comes around! Going back to my white blouse and spring boots example, if I see a perfect pair of boots that cost, say $200, I know that each payday I will need to set aside $50 in order to purchase them. By doing so, I don’t have to suffer from a small paycheque one week just because I found the perfect boots. Setting aside money is a perfect way to make large purchases—it doesn’t hurt your bank balance as much, it allows you to budget accurately and it helps you to avoid credit cards.
Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll think twice about your post-midterm shopping trip and sit down to itemize the things that you need in your life.
Once you have estimated the cost, you can begin saving so that you will be ready once you find that perfect pair of new shoes.