Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Being Confident with your Spending: 4 Strategies to Curb Impulse Buying
Ever walked into Target for "just one thing" only to leave with a cartful of unexpected purchases? You're not alone. After my own wake-up call—buying a shirt my son didn't need—I realized my shopping habits needed a serious overhaul.
This transformation didn't happen overnight, but by implementing four simple strategies, I've dramatically reduced my impulse buying and unnecessary spending. The first game-changer was creating dedicated shopping lists in my phone that I actually maintain. Before any purchase, I check my list—if it's not there, it probably means we don't need it. This system has saved me from countless "but I thought we needed this" moments that used to drain my wallet.
My second strategy might sound simple, but it's been revolutionary: a separate "things to buy" list for non-urgent items. That cheese grater that broke? The extra storage basket that would complete my dining room set? They go on this list rather than becoming immediate purchases. When I have extra spending money or receive a gift card, I already know exactly what would bring lasting value to our home.
Grocery pickup has been another unexpected ally in my battle against overbuying. Without those tempting store aisles, my impulse purchases have plummeted. And finally, limiting online orders to once weekly gives me the crucial cooling-off period needed to separate fleeting wants from genuine needs. The number of items I've deleted from my Amazon cart during this waiting period is staggering!
Whether you're trying to stick to a tight budget or simply want to be more intentional about what enters your home, these strategies can help you shop with greater purpose. Everything we bring into our homes occupies not just physical space but mental space too—a realization that's transformed how I view every purchase. Ready to break the overbuying cycle? Share your own shopping strategies with me on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast and let's build a community of intentional consumers together.
Join my e-mail list: Click here
Take my skincare quiz: Click here
Buy makeup products here and help survivors of child sexual abuse
Shop Confident Expression Etsy Shop: Click here
Visit saprea.org to learn more about hope and healing from child sexual abuse
Visit Defend Innocence for resources on child sexual abuse prevention
Connect with Ciera on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast
you're listening to confidently beautiful with sierra a podcast to help you stay confidently beautiful, because we all have confidence inside us. We just need to bring it out and I'm here to show you how body image, dreams, parenting, style, personality and more here we cover it all. Get ready to stay confidently beautiful. Hi friend, have you ever gone shopping for just one thing and somehow you left with an entire cart full of things you didn't really need? Yeah, me too. I am guilty of overbuying all the time, grabbing things on impulse, buying duplicates, spending money on stuff that ends up just collecting dust or being stuck in my closet and never touched. But over the past couple of months, I've been really intentional about changing this habit, and today I'm sharing four simple strategies that have helped me to stop my overbuying and overspending. If you feel like you're constantly overspending or bringing home things you don't actually need, this episode is for you. This is for people who have a lot of money who don't have a lot of money. All of us are guilty of overbuying, overspending, buying things we don't really need, and so I hope that this episode can be helpful for you. So, before we get started, make sure you subscribe. Share this episode with a friend, I have story time as we dive into this episode. So this is my Target wake up call, is what we're going to call it.
Speaker 1:Last fall I walked into Target as I was prepping all of my fall festivities. The fall was in the air and I found the cutest little fall button up shirts. I'm a sucker for the little boy button up shirts and I was like, oh, these are going to be so cute, so I put them. I grabbed one size for my three-year-old, one size for my baby and I put them in my cart and, like, just went on with my shopping and they were adorable. They were, I felt like, affordable and I felt like I was getting a great deal. But then here's the problem when I got home, I opened up my three-year-old's closet to put it away and guess what His closet was like? Overflowing with long sleeve shirts. We were just entering fall and so I hadn't really been paying attention to, like, his long sleeve situation. He was overflowing with long sleeve shirts. So did I really need that shirt? No, I wasn't buying out of necessity, I was just buying out of impulse and legitimately, my baby did need it, but my little three-year-old, he did not need to have a matching shirt and I, if I had been more organized then I would have stopped my overbuying. Probably I would have already known that his closet was already bursting at the seam with about 20 long sleeve shirts, so I didn't not need to do that.
Speaker 1:So here are my four strategies that I have really been trying to implement this year. This is these are my strategies to stop overbuying and to shop smarter. Number one keep an updated shopping list in my phone. Phone. So I have a note in my phone where I can track easily what each family member needs. I have a close. My kids need note in my phone. So this year, before I've bought anything, I have checked this list to see if it's on there. If it's on there, then I can get it. If it's not on there, I probably don't need it, because I'm pretty good at keeping this list up to date.
Speaker 1:Every time I go through the kids closet, I always try and update it, because I'm pretty good at keeping this list up to date. Every time I go through the kids closet, I always try and update it. If I put something in the donate bin, then I go and update the list, knowing that I'm going to need to replace that item. This has saved me so much money and it has prevented those. Do we already have this moments? Because I can't keep track of everything in my home? Let's be honest, I already have enough in my head I I can't keep track of everything in my home. Let's be honest, I already have enough in my head I can't keep track of it all, and so this has really helped me with that. So put a note in your phone. I even do it for myself. I even have a note for myself Like these are the things I need. Yes, sometimes it's still totally fun to treat yourself or treat your kids to something that you might not necessarily need, but if you're trying to stop the overbuying, I have found this has helped me feel so much more confident while I'm shopping, to make sure that I'm not buying something that I really don't need and that I'm going to get home and feel happy with my purchase.
Speaker 1:Number two is a use a things to buy list for non-grocery items. So, again, a note in my phone. I keep a separate list. That is just a things to buy list. I have that note in my phone for specific like clothing items or shoe items that my kids need. But then I also have like a things to buy list. This is like things that are not urgent, they're not my weekly grocery list items, they're just things that eventually it would be nice to buy.
Speaker 1:So, for example, I have this cute buffet in my dining room and when we moved into this new house then I was organizing things and I found, oh, this is going to be the perfect spot for, like all of my paper goods, and so I put all my paper goods in there and I had these black baskets that I could put them in, and I organized them. Well, I noticed that I have only three black baskets and it really ideally I should have four in there, because that's just how the setup is, that it would fit best with four. So I just opened up my app in my phone and I put black basket for the buffet, okay, and that's all I have to do. And so then, like, if I get a gift card or I'm like, oh, I have a little bit of extra spending money this month, I can open up that list and see what it is that I am needing.
Speaker 1:Another example is my cheese grater broke. It really isn't the end of the world, I don't have to have a cheese grater. I can just buy the pre-shredded cheese, even though I prefer the fresh cheese because it's healthier for you, and it's healthier for you and it's, in my opinion, tastes a lot better. It's just, it just tastes fresh, and so I do. I have to have the cheese grater? No, I don't, but I put it in the list so that if I have a birthday coming up, if I have some extra spending money, then I can grab that cheese grater if I want and I don't have to sit there and think what do I want to spend my money on? This can also help me if I am out shopping with friends and I want to be able to, like, buy something to treat myself. I can know what I actually have been wanting and needing and not like just impulsively buying things that I may end up just sticking somewhere and never touching ever again.
Speaker 1:My number three tip is to do grocery pickup. I don't know how I survived without grocery pickup. I started doing grocery pickup in 2020 and my life has never been the same. It has helped me in so many ways, but specifically with being confident, with not overbuying or overspending. It has helped me to have fewer impulse buys. I do occasionally like, as I'm on their website and I'm filling in my cart, I do occasionally see something and I'm like, ooh, I want to try that or that sounds good, and I, you know, I add it to the cart. But I find that I do that a lot less frequently when I am doing online grocery pickup, versus going through and walking up and down the aisles and shopping in the store.
Speaker 1:I also keep a Costco list. So my grocery pickup is like, for I shop at my local Smith's, my local Kroger store, but then I also like to do a Costco run at the beginning of every month, and so I also keep a Costco list in my notes app to make sure I'm only buying what I actually need when I go there, because, oh my goodness, we all know the damage that can be done at Costco, right. And so I have a running app in my phone to make sure that I can always know what I'm needing at Costco, so that when I sit down to write my list or I walk into the store, I'm not just wondering, oh, what do I actually really need from here? And I have an idea of what I need before I even go inside.
Speaker 1:And number four is to limit my online orders to once a week. You could do once a week, you could do once a month, whatever works best for you. It's so easy to just buy things with one click, so I have set a rule that my Amazon and my Target orders only happen once a week. Occasionally, yes, of course, I'm going to have something that I'm like oh well, I have to have this in two days, and so I will order stuff occasionally, but overall, I really try to just do a once a week Amazon and Target order, and so throughout the week, if I see something that I want, I can add it to my Amazon cart or I can add it to an Amazon wish list and instead of checking out immediately, I can wait, and then by that week, when it's ready for me, time for me to place my order, I can go through and I can take out what I actually really didn't want, like maybe I just sounded good in the moment, it sounded like something that I needed in the moment, and I have found that I have deleted so many things from my cart when I do it that way, so that has been really helpful for me.
Speaker 1:My Amazon wish lists are forever and ever and ever long. They are so long, which also makes it really great for when people ask me what I want for gifts, because I have a list. I have an ongoing wish list, which is really good, but it also keeps me from not just buying things and then being like, oh, I don't actually really need that and I have found, even when I put it on my wish list, I'm thinking that I really want it. Then when I like go to put together a Christmas list for my mom or whatever, and then I can go through the list and be like, actually I really don't want any of this stuff. I would not be happy if I got this stuff and so I can take it off and it's just funny. I think it's funny how we think we want or need something in the moment, but then, if we let time go by, we can see what we actually would never use that item or we actually don't really want that.
Speaker 1:Those are my four tips. I hope that they are practical and easy for you to implement into your life and maybe they'll help you with your overbuying and shopping smarter. Maybe this isn't a problem for you, but I think that we all could be smarter with our money. No matter how much or little money we have, we could all be smarter with it. And we could also be smarter with what we're bringing into our homes. Everything that we bring into our homes is going to take up some space in our brain. Every time we walk past it it's going to be seeing another mess that we need to clean up or something else that we need to put away.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear your best bunny saving and overbuying prevention tips. So DM me on Instagram at confidently beautiful podcast and let me know what works for you. Do you have something that you do that really works for you? And I would love to share some of your responses on a future episode or in my Instagram stories so that we can all learn and grow from each other. So I hope this helps you to be more confident with your buying and overspending and be more confident with your finances and what you are bringing into your home. Until next time, stay confidently beautiful. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram at confidently beautiful podcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.