Personal Finance Advice

Your friend invites you to come along on a shopping trip to the mall, or to attend a party for a home based business where overpriced items are sold. You’re trying to watch your money and to not make any unnecessary purchases, but you like the social aspect behind shopping with your friends. You decide to go ahead and join your friend with the intention of not buying anything at all. Your plan is to just spend time enjoying your friend’s company and not reach for your wallet.

Problems arise when you start to see how much fun everyone else is having with their shopping, or when you stumble upon an item that you really want to buy. Shopping can be a social activity, but it’s also an activity that can easily be driven by peer pressure. You see how much fun everyone else is having spending money, and whether you realize it or not, this makes you want to spend money too. This isn’t only with high-pressure home based business parties either; it also happens while out shopping at a store with your friends too.

How do you avoid this situation? The obvious solution is to not go out shopping when you can’t afford to spend any money. If you can’t avoid this, making promises to yourself that you won’t spend any money won’t work if you already know that you will be tempted to buy things. Some people try the tactic of not taking a wallet with them, but this can backfire when your friends try to do you a favor and lend you the money to buy the things they want to buy. They think they are being nice, when in fact they are thwarting your efforts to get your personal finances in better shape.

It isn’t your friends’ fault that they are willing to help you buy things you don’t need. This is all about personal accountability. You need to take control of the situation and decline offers of temporary loans from your friends, or better yet, don’t even go shopping to begin with if you are trying to cut back on your expenses. After all, window shopping can indeed be a lot of fun, but don’t you know that marketing experts are always hard at work trying to figure out ways to get window shopping to evolve into actual shopping?

Know your limitations. If you know that you will wind up spending money, yet you are trying to get your finances in order, don’t even bother putting yourself into situations where you will be tempted to spend money. Decline invitations to shop with friends and politely refuse any friends or family members who try to rope you into buying things you don’t need.