Emotional Spending- A Boon or a Bane?

When the lockdown hit us, we all experienced different emotions. With that, we had other mechanisms to cope with and grow out of things that were unsettling. Some resorted to art, some to food, and some to music. There was no universal way to cope with everything around us.

Despite things being locked down, e-commerce bloomed. A lot of small businesses came to the market as well, which is why it bloomed too. Why did that happen? Studies and results have shown that people were involved in a lot of emotional spending during the pandemic.

To begin talking about the same, it is necessary to hand off the phenomenon as to what exactly emotional spending is. How many times has it happened to you that you felt sad or happy, or felt like eating something or buying something for yourself? It happens quite often to all of us. This is exactly what emotional spending, aka, retail therapy or impulse buying, is. Anything you spend on that is driven by one’s emotions is what one calls emotional spending.

Researches time and again has also shown biological reasons behind why emotional spending makes one feel happy. One reason is that it releases the hormone dopamine, which is responsible for making one feel happy. Not only that, it makes one feel a sense of control. Deciding what you want to buy helps one to feel in control, irrespective of everything being out of control.?

One might wonder how emotional spending differs from general spending made in general by others. When one spends emotionally, they tend to invest in things they do not need or require at all. So instead of buying groceries, one will invest in buying clothes, makeup, shoes, or skincare, which is not required by them at the time. The focus is on items that provide one with pleasure.

Though emotional spending does help one ‘feel good’, it is not a healthy coping mechanism. Keeping in mind how easy it is to avail credit these days (thanks to BNPL), it can land you in debt. Not only that, it can make you regret things you did not want in place of things you do want. Feelings of sadness, boredom, and jealousy contribute to emotional spending. When your bank balance is hit hard, then it compromises your financial well-being, which directly impacts your mental well-being. To curb the same, one then again indulges in buying emotionally and the cycle carries on.?

To get a hang of emotional spending, one firstly needs to understand their triggers. A bad day at work can be a trigger for one to buy a body wash when they do not even need it in the first place. Instead of spending, one can resort to alternatives like writing a journal, watching a movie or just having a cup of coffee/tea near your plants. Not only this, one can make a monthly budget to spend on certain items. Doing so will lower the burden of spending too much.

One needs to remember that emotional spending sometimes is fine. We all deserve to enjoy and treat ourselves to things which look fancy-both price and appearance-wise. But at the same time, it should not come at the cost of your financial well-being, similarly as nothing should come at the cost of your mental well-being.