How to Prevent Online Impulse Shopping

Are you an easy victim to impulse buying, especially when you are just browsing online? Here are some steps to help prevent you from buying unnecessary things online.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A budget

1. If you really feel the need to buy something, try this strategy out. Put everything in the online shopping cart that you want to buy. Go ahead and put in your information and get all the way to the page where you have to hit a button to confirm your purchase. Then, close your browser out. Your results may differ, but in general you can psyche yourself out into thinking you bought the items and will feel the satisfaction in doing so without paying a dime.

2. Get the Stumble Upon toolbar for your browser. When you find yourself putting random things into the shopping cart at a online retail store, hit the Stumble button. You'll be whisked away to a page full of kittens and rainbows, instead of a confirmation page that you just wasted your money.

3. Transfer some money from your banking account into a Paypal account. This will be your online shopping budget for the month. Then, when you want to buy something online, only use Paypal. Now, not every store will accept Paypal, but that just makes this idea even better! Once you've depleted the money from your Paypal account, you can only replenish it the next month.

4. If you are going to browse for random products online, then just browse the craziest, most expensive things. For example, if you feel the need to buy something go check out some Ferrari's on eBay. The chance of you actually making an impulse purchase on the Ferrari is slim to none, and you can still have fun looking at these luxurious items. It's when you start browsing things within or even below your price comfort level that people tend to start making impulse decisions. After all, "it's only ten dollars". You can't say the same thing with a Ferrari though.

[hollie1974]

on 2/14/2009 Thank you! Great tips!