I’m sitting alone at home on a Friday night and feeling disheartened. I loved the idea of a night curled on the settee with a true-crime documentary, but now I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with me for not being out on the weekend, for having no plans. It’s been a tough week at work, after a countless row of tough weeks, and my mental health has been a rollercoaster lately.
So, I open my laptop and go to buy something that will make me feel happy, a little serotonin boost of a new thing, even just for a moment. Maybe it’s more Korean skincare products that promise to give me smooth, glowing skin. Maybe it’s a cute top that will increase my confidence the next time I go out. Maybe it’s a sunrise lamp to make these dark mornings feel a little bit easier.
Over the past year, it’s been all of these things, and more. A stuffed Jellycat corgi toy I bought to replace my yearning for a real dog to cuddle with right now. Countless overpriced lattes and pastries to make me feel better on drizzly Monday mornings. I estimate that I’ve spent at least £600 on impulsive spending in the last year – unnecessary purchases all made in an effort to boost my mood. And at 28 – the oldest of the Gen Z cohort – I’m not alone.
Kaldi, a UK fintech startup, revealed that Gen Z shoppers are caught in a concerning shame-spending cycle, with 91 per cent indulging in emotional spending purely to lift their mood, and a whopping 74 per cent experiencing shoppers’ remorse over these impulse buys.
Boredom is another significant driving force among young people seeking gratification, with 24 per cent aged between 18 and 24 admitting to buying unessential items for this reason alone.
But it’s not just Gen Z – 66 per cent of UK adults admit to regularly indulging in emotional spending to cheer themselves up. The same study shows that 46 per cent of British consumers report feeling guilty after purchasing but continue to splurge on impulsive mood-boost buys.
We all buy things we don’t really need, let’s be honest. But emotional spending is when you specifically buy things to make yourself feel better in the moment. It’s different to simply purchasing a cute pair of jeans because you need them and have thought through the decision and whether you can afford them at that time. Instead, you’re pulling the trigger on the purchase because it makes you feel less sad or anxious in the moment.
Alice Tapper, a financial expert and founder of Go Fund Yourself says it’s important to try and not be too hard on ourselves if we’ve overindulged. “If you love the dopamine rush of buying something but you’re feeling regret about purchases a lot of the time, or if you feel like you’ve gone a bit too far and you feel a lot of shame about it, remember that we all do it to some degree,” says Tapper.
“There’s an interesting thing called the lipstick effect where during recession, sales of small luxury items like lipsticks goes up,” she says. “It’s because in hard times we really do need that dopamine fix of something that feels like a reward. Dialogue about money between friends has really increased in the last few years and having open conversations – and even laughing about purchases that have gone wrong – is a really positive way to combat any shame or guilt.”
Given the current state of the world, constant doom at the scroll of a thumb, and the cost of living and inflation rendering homeownership a mere dream to many, the lipstick effect feels like it’s amplified.
According to Eloise Skinner, a psychotherapist and author, emotional spending is about more than just sadness; it’s about what we associate with finances. “This kind of behaviour could be driven by a wide range of factors, but the common feature is the association of emotions with financial decisions,” Skinner says. “The emotion itself could vary – fear, anger, sadness, panic – but the response it triggers is a financial purchase or investment.”
I always felt like if I stopped my emotional shopping, I’d be restricting myself. Did I want to save up for a mortgage and pension? Yes, of course! But I also lost two parents before they turned 62, so I knew how fragile life could be and the need to enjoy your life while you can.
Sim Kaur, founder of Girls That Invest, reassured me that emotional spending is often mistaken for a form of self-care. “Emotional spending often starts because it feels like self-care, and we’re conditioned to believe that treating ourselves equates to spending money,” Kaur says.
“We’re constantly shown luxury lifestyles and ‘must-have’ purchases, which creates Fomo and makes it easy to justify spending on things we don’t truly need. Self-care can also mean investing in yourself financially.”
How can we stop emotional spending when we’re constantly surrounded by ads, posts about nice things, and the deep-rooted uncertainty of the world?
Michela Allocca, author of Own Your Money and founder of Break Your Budget, has a two-step process to stopping mood buys. “First is to get to the root of the problem and this comes from recognising the habit and patterns,” Allocca explains. “What are your spending triggers? Do you find you shop after a long social media scroll, after a hard day at the office, or after an argument with your partner? What are you seeking from the purchase?”
She urges people to create “spending rules”. “For example, you may not make any purchases from your phone; only buy something when you run out of it; limit yourself to one clothing purchase per month,” she says.
“Create true friction in the buying process: not saving your credit card information on your phone or computer so you have to get up and enter it, unsubscribing from sales emails from stores, creating an impulse list, following the 48-hour rule.”
I appreciated this practical approach to the issue, as imagining everything I could save up for felt too vague. Yes, a down payment on a house sounds great, but that matching workout set is right there in front of me, offering me a discounted price. Creating hurdles to your own emotional spending might seem infantilising, but maybe it can bridge that first stage of breaking the habit.
Skinner urges people to opt for a non-finance approach to the issue and “get to the heart of the emotion behind the spending decision, and then adopt a habit that supports or helps with processing it.” She suggests replacing the habit of emotional spending with a different distraction, like “another form of content such as a film or favourite blog, or engaging in a creative use of online time” – which could be a course or Pinterest.
I don’t think I’ll ever be the person who plans every penny of my income and never buys an overpriced flat white in a tiny cup. I’ll choose the treats that make my life feel glittery, like heading to a café to work and getting my nails done, and limit it to those. But I am going to stop using emotional shopping as a cure for my mental health and look elsewhere for that help, like therapy.
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