The Reason Why You Buy More Than You Need

Throughout my life, I have had the opportunity to witness many people wasting money to buy more than they actually need. There can be many reasons that explain this habit. We all know a bunch of people that splurge and make poor financial decisions. We can classify them and make a fast analysis of their life and also ours to find out why we end up buying more than we need and often throw money away in order to get things we don´t need.

I have collected a few theories based on random people that I met at some point in my life, including myself. Let me know if you feel related to some of these!

1. There is something missing in your life

Lack of love or passion in your life, emptiness or frustration. The feeling that by getting a material item you are filling your life somehow… In fact, that’s what marketing and advertisements are all about. Try to do some self-analysis and think about what do you expect from the item just before you buy it.  Maybe that can help you see if you are an “emotional consumer”.

If you feel familiar with this situation, a cheaper alternative to that feeling could be to find some other hobbies that help you cope with those frustrations or negative feelings. Maybe hobbies like writing and painting can help you feel better and improve your mental health. Perhaps, playing an instrument or listening to music is more your thing.

In any case, if you want to fill emotional frustrations, you need to apply emotional resources, not material ones.

2-    You hate your job so much

I could relate to this one in the past. One of my first jobs was horrible; I had to work very long hours. At the time, I was hating it so much that, every day off, I wouldn´t mind buying everything I wanted. I would excuse myself thinking “I worked so hard, I deserve this”. If you are in a similar situation, remember that you are working so hard for the money, not for any useless item that looks nice.

And the most important thing is, If you dislike your job so much, you probably want to save money every day so you can quit and start a new job/career. That’s one of your few ways out. If you keep spending all the money you earn, you will need to stay in the same job you hate.

You don´t like your current situation and the only person that can change your life situation is yourself. Spending all your money keeps you dependent on that job because you need the money to live. You work long hours in order to make money so that, in the future, your savings will help you change your situation.

3-    You are moving/just moved into a new place

This one applies to me again. Every time I move into a new place, I declutter and throw away a bunch of items I don’t need anymore. However, just a few days after moving, I start buying things I want to believe I need. More knives, glasses, towels…The truth is that I end up buying things that are completely unnecessary. It’s not a big deal, but if you move too often, you might want to be careful with that.

And I am moving again soon! This time I pinky promised myself I will keep an eye on that and stop fooling myself into buying more than I need. I have started reading a couple of amazing minimalist blogs to improve that area of my life.

Now that I can identify my “consumer weaknesses”, I have started to write the things I really need to buy. I want to make sure I control everything I don’t need.

4-    You feel pressure to “Keep up with the Joneses” (family edition)

In this case, we focus on family members. I know some people can feel the pressure to buy a bigger home in a nice suburb because their relatives are doing it. Nobody wants to feel like they are the “losers of the family”.

I used to have this friend in high school. Her family wasn’t rich, but most of her family members were in a comfortable financial position. They came to the country with some savings and created a business that worked out pretty well. The mother was taking care of a nice shop whilst the father was getting nice projects in the construction industry. They had a beautiful house with a garden and 2 brand new cars. Most of her family members were in a similar financial situation. Not her uncle, though.

Apparently, her uncle wasn’t having much luck with his overall life. His company closed and he was unemployed. He was also going through an expensive divorce and his mother was borrowing him money to afford his basic needs. After some time being unemployed, he got a short-term project. He was going to get 2 paychecks for 2 months in that project. That would have been an amazing opportunity to make some savings. At the end of the day, after the 2 paychecks, he was likely to be unemployed again.

However, during the first month, he had an accident that led him to buy a new car. The accident was bad luck, but his decision to buy an expensive one was just his responsibility. When his mother, tired of borrowing his money, asked him WHY did he need to buy that Mercedes, he said something along the lines of:

“I work hard for the money, and (brother’s name) also has one”.

To be the only one in the family that’s is going through a rough patch can make you feel like you need to buy more than you should in order to pretend that you are “up to the standard”. Nevertheless, by making those poor choices you are just likely to stay in that situation.

5-    To show off

We all know someone that belongs to this category. Some people have the need to make themselves look rich.

When I was studying, I met this girl at college who was working part-time as a waitress. Her salary was pretty low, but she was obsessed with the idea of buying a car. It´s worth mentioning that we were living in a city with an amazing public transport service. You could use the bus, tram and tube to get anywhere. However, she wanted to buy a car because “it gives you freedom”. She wasn’t willing to change her mind.

One day, she arrived at the shitty bar she was working in a new BMW. She said she just wanted to have the BEST.

The thing is, with a terribly low salary, she got a huge loan that she would be paying for many years. Having a car in the first place was unnecessary, but getting a very expensive car was probably the worst financial decision she could have ever made. Of course, after some time with her, I came to realize that wasn’t the only bad financial choice she made.

During a lunch break, she mentioned how she was actually paying some debt to her brother. Apparently, she had borrowed some money from him just to pay the phone bill. And guess which was her phone…

A brand new iPhone!

For some reason, she wanted to buy the most expensive phone you could find in the market without having the money to pay for it. So, instead of getting a cheaper one, she was borrowing money from her brother and to pay it every month. Futhermore, we can also add the loan from the bank to buy the car, and those were probably not the only debts she had. I remember she used to wear designer clothes and purses.

Some days ago, I was reading a forum related to personal finances and someone wrote, “every time I see someone driving a very expensive car, I think of poor financial decisions instead of wealth”. That’s a pretty understandable though. One of the financial mistakes people can make, especially young people who just landed their first job is buying an expensive car.

6-    You idealize items

This one is probably the most complicated to spot. In my opinion, the best way to find out if you suffer what I call “Romantic Consumerism” is to focus on something you bought with the purpose of introducing it to your life to start practising or learn a new skill. However, now you realize that you have used it less than 5 times.

A great way to avoid falling in this trap is asking yourself WHY do you want the item. For example, you might be obsessed with a very expensive camera. However, you have never been into that hobby at all. You never studied photography and don’t travel too much. Maybe, you could idealizing the camera.

There is a big probability that after buying the camera, you won´t use it too much and forget about it in a matter of weeks. If you really think that photography is going to be your next super skill, try and use your phone first. Learn about photography, read some books about it. If after that, you still you are serious about dedicating time to it, go ahead.

Same with getting new ski equipment. Does it snow where you live? How many times a year do you really ski? If it´s just around 3 per year, you may want to rethink if you want to spend that money on very expensive ski equipment. Most of the ski resorts have plenty of places where you can rent everything you need for a cheaper price and you don’t need to find extra space at home to keep it during the rest of the year.

7. You were raised like that

This one is a hard one. Your parents used to reward you with material things, even if they were not meaningful or necessary.

If you eat the sandwich, they would get you a little something. Maybe an inexpensive bracelet, maybe a new notebook. The problem is that if this becomes a habit, you can unconsciously assume that you deserve something material just after doing something, or after having a bad day, or after getting something done. And you start buying nonsense crap as a reward. As a teenager, I used to buy frivolously, and because the things I was buying weren’t expensive, I thought they didn’t make a difference.

You can easily tell if you buy too much by just looking at your parent’s habits when you were a kid. The importance of receiving items and presents or giving presents as proof of affection.