6 tips for stopping impulse purchasing which really help

Having ADHD can make unplanned spending a nightmare, leaving you in debt with stuff you never really wanted. How do you break the habit?

ADHD can significantly impact an individual's financial wellbeing, as well as their stress levels and mental health. People with ADHD are known to struggle with impulse control, making it challenging to manage their spending habits. This often leads to overspending and accumulating debt, which can have long-term effects on their financial stability. However, there are strategies that people with ADHD can adopt to improve their financial management skills.  

One of the most effective approaches is creating a budget and sticking to it. A budget helps individuals plan their expenses and prioritize their needs over wants. Additionally, using visual aids such as charts or graphs can help individuals track their progress towards meeting their financial goals. 

Traditional common-sense advice dictates that it is also essential for people with ADHD, or anyone else for that matter, to avoid impulsive purchases by giving themselves a cooling-off period before buying something they don't need or cannot afford.  

But if you have ADHD simply controlling the urge to spend, or even deciding if you really need something, whether you can afford it or not are not so easy to reconcile. Setting a budget or creating visual aids to help you track your spending are fine in theory, but in practise expenses keep coming, even if the money doesn’t.  

So what really helps? 

First of all, if you’re reading this you probably know you have ADHD, medically diagnosed or not. That being the case, you know the value and importance of keeping a list. And a list is a lifesaver here too!  

It’s obvious, but never go shopping without a list. EVER! I mean it, if you don’t have a list, don’t buy anything. If you made a list, go home and get it! Don’t try to remember what you needed and freestyle it, you’ll just end up getting things you don’t need and nothing you do, so you'll just have to go out shopping all over again.  

Use your listing skills for your bills too. Make a list and pay them all off, but this time set up a Direct Debit as well, and schedule them to get paid as soon as possible after you get paid, because if you have that money in your account and it’s not taken away again immediately you might get to thinking it’s yours, and you have the right to spend it on what you want.  

Paying on time saves you money by avoiding late fees too. Why should you give the electricity company or bank money just because your ADHD made you forget to pay them? That doesn’t seem fair.  

The problem with “just don’t spend it if you haven’t got it” is that ADHD doesn’t process that, especially in these days of easy credit and deferred payments. Your poor impulse control and need for immediate gratification mean that there is little to no chance of your not having that thing you want, despite not having the available funds to buy it.  

The guilt and stigma surrounding irresponsible spending, debt, poor self control will lead many ADHDers to feelings of shame, stress and anxiety, especially if the debt they go into becomes unmanageable, which is why it’s so much more than a financial decision to become financially responsible.  

Six Recommendations to Avoid Impulse Purchasing  

These tips work best if you’re at home with your cards and a computer where the whole world is a shopping mall, but you can adapt some of these tips for when you’re on the highstreet too. 

1. Delay spending 

Give yourself 24 hours to really think about buying something if it’s a big ticket item. Leave it in your shopping basket and perhaps you’ll forget about it all together, you find a better deal (to take a day thinking about) or you decide you don’t want it anyway. Giving it 24 hours lets you think about how it fits in with your budget, and whether it would be a better idea to save up for it instead of buying it immediately.  

2. Plan a budget in line with your savings 

Give yourself a budget for stuff every month. After you’ve paid all the bills, accounted for food, clothes, and putting a little by in savings, what’s left is your ‘disposable income’. You don’t have to spend all of it, but this is the money you can afford to spend on fun things without necessarily feeling guilty. Having that budget to stick to means being able to tell yourself “NO!” if you can’t afford something that you already know deep down is a mistake too. 

3. Put up barriers to spending 

If you’re shopping online that means the shops are open 24 hours, whether you’re feeling down and want a pick-me-up, or you’re feeling great and want a treat. So delete your shopping apps and remove yourself from automatic completion tools if you shop somewhere regularly (this is a really handy tip for online security too). If you make it so you have to fill in your card details with every purchase you get time to think about what you’re doing and decide not to, or go back to tip number 1. 

4. Allow yourself a little fun 

Shopping isn’t an all or nothing scenario. You have to buy things, and sometimes that’s going to be an enjoyable experience, especially if it’s something you’ve been dreaming of and saving up for. Being too restrictive on your spending is setting yourself up to fail, like falling off the wagon. Overspending some of your disposable income, or spending it wastefully doesn’t mean you’ve failed so you don’t have to punish yourself or give up trying to be good because you’re rubbish at it. It just means you’ve lapsed, but you’re going to keep at it.  

5. Get help 

That doesn’t necessarily mean checking in with a debt management counsellor or a financial advice service, but if you have a friend, partner or parent who you can talk to openly about your impulsive spending, that can really help. Check in with them so you can tell them about your wins, your temptations and (hopefully not) your failures. Choose someone who will congratulate and celebrate your great efforts and will commiserate without judging you when you had a little splurge.  

6. Distract yourself 

Honey, you’ve got ADHD, finding a way of getting distracted is what you do best! If you’re shopping as a therapy or self medicating via the buzz of instant gratification, do something else. Go out for a walk, put some music on and have a long soak, call your finance partner and tell them you’re in temptation’s path. So long as you put your payment card away and move away from the source of that temptation is a good thing. By doing something else that makes you feel good you get the distraction, and you get the dopamine reward for doing something rewarding, the same hit that you would have got from impulsive shopping, keep it up and you’ll be on top of your finances in no time!