Ep. 24 - Money & Mindset Series: How to Break the Impulse Spending Cycle Without Restriction

Recap of Episode
Let’s get brutally honest - impulse spending isn’t just about “bad habits” or lack of willpower. In this episode, Sarah Jones dives deep into the emotional rollercoaster behind those “add to cart” moments, from FOMO and dopamine hits to the myth of retail therapy. She unpacks why no-spend challenges set you up to fail, shares her own unfiltered stories, and hands you practical, real-life strategies to break the cycle - without ever feeling deprived. If you’re ready to spend in ways that actually align with your values (and still have fun), this one’s for you.

What You Will Learn

• The Emotional Triggers Behind Impulse Spending:
  Discover how FOMO, social comparison, dopamine hits, retail therapy, decision fatigue, and scarcity messaging fuel your spending habits.
• Why Restriction Fails:
  Learn why no-spend challenges and rigid budgets almost never work long-term - and what actually does.
• The Real Costs of Impulse Spending:
  See how “just $20” can quietly snowball into debt, overdrafts, missed goals, and relationship stress.
• Practical Strategies to Break the Cycle:
  Get actionable tips: delete shopping apps, unsubscribe from marketing emails, unattach saved payment info, disable one-click buying, track your triggers (even your cycle!), and use a 48-hour purchase window.
• How to Build a Flexible, Values-Aligned Money Plan:
  Find out how to create a plan that includes “free money” for guilt-free, planned impulse spending - so you can enjoy life and still hit your financial goals.
• Permission to Spend (Without Guilt):
  Learn how to say yes to what matters, ditch the shame, and make your money plan a true reflection of your values and dreams.

Timestamps

00:00 | Welcome Back & Why This Episode Matters‌ Sarah normalizes the impulse spending struggle and sets the stage for a judgment-free conversation.
02:15 | Defining Impulse Spending & Emotional Drivers‌ The rush, the regret, and why the world is designed to make us spend.
06:30 | Social Comparison, FOMO & Dopamine Hits ‌How “keeping up with the Joneses,” scarcity, and limited-time offers hijack your brain.
11:00 | Why Restriction Doesn’t Work ‌The truth about no-spend challenges and why they backfire.
15:45 | The Real Costs of Impulse Spending‌ Debt, overdrafts, missed goals, and relationship strain—how small purchases add up.
20:30 | Practical Strategies to Break the Cycle ‌Track your triggers, delete apps, unattach payment info, and create friction to slow down spending.
28:00 | Creating a Flexible, Values-Aligned Money Plan ‌How to build in “free money” and spend intentionally - without shame.
33:30 | Outro & Call to Action‌ Sarah invites you to book a complimentary coaching call and reminds you: you get to choose your hard, so choose the one that moves you closer to your goals.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Traveling Towards Wealth, the podcast where money meets adventure and freedom is always on the horizon. I'm Sarah Jones, financial coach, full-time traveler, houseplant lover, sourdough maker, and your guide to building a life that's as rich in experiences as it is in peace of mind. Each month, we dive into a new theme, whether it's real money stories, the ins and outs of full-time travel, building a business, or multiples while on the road, or finding wellness and simplicity wherever you are. Here, you'll get practical tips, honest conversations, and a gentle push to spend, save, and live according to your values, not someone else's rules. If you're ready to design a life you truly love, one where you can travel more, stress less, build financial confidence, shop safer, and wake up every day feeling like you're exactly where you're meant to be, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite drink, settle in, and let's start traveling towards wealth. One story at a time. Hey, welcome back. I'm really happy that you are back, and thank you for continuing to listen to this podcast. My goal, truthfully, is to just help educate, help normalize some of this, help bring awareness, but also let you know that what you are experiencing, whether all of or in part of the topics that I talk about, affect so many of us. Right? You're not alone. And today I want to talk about impulse spending. I'm sure that you've probably bought something on a whim, right? It felt really great in the moment, like it felt really exciting, but almost instantly there was some regret, there was some shame, guilt, frustration with yourself for spending those dollars. If that's happened to you, it's definitely happened to me. It's this is a normal human response, really in a world that is designed to make us spend money and buy things left and right. How many times a day do you see an ad rolling through your Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or Roku TV wanting you to buy something every couple of seconds? This world, the marketing that is happening is just throwing it in our face to spend by. How you can maybe start to understand and look at some of the cycles, start breaking some of those cycles, but without feeling like really restricted in doing so, and without going into full no spend mode, because here news flash, no spend months, or challenging yourself to not spend anything is 99.9% of the time not beneficial in the long run. Alright, so we don't do restriction here. So today we're really talking about impulse spending, right? Why does impulse spending happen? Some of the reasons and some of the the the like some of the emotional drivers that happen is retail therapy. How many times have you heard about retail therapy being such a great thing, right? People are like, oh, I felt so good, let's just go and I need some retail therapy. This is like shopping as a mood booster, but there's a lot of guilt, so you've got this guilt hangover that happens afterwards, right? Impulse spending happens because there's an emotional imbalance, right? Wanting to feel like, hey, I'm an adult, I can do what I want to do. I've worked really hard for this, I deserve it. I'm gonna treat myself. Yeah, that's an emotional imbalance that is driving your impulse spending, and it's that way of thinking, that mindset, that imbalance is hurting you in the long run. I know you've said it, like, oh, it's on sale, I'm gonna get it. Oh, I've really wanted this for a long time and it's on sale, so I'm gonna grab it. I'm sorry to break it to you, but that's an emotional driver for impulse spending. And it fuels the fire, it fuels the triggers and it it reinforces in your brain that this is okay for the the the time being, but really in the long run, what you're doing is you're adding to the shame, the guilt, and there's the restriction, the the overwhelm. Because in the back of your mind, you know that this isn't the healthy thing for you to be doing. Right? There's some psychological triggers too, like this FOMO scarcity. I oh, I don't want to miss out. So-and-so bought it, everyone else has it, limited time offers, again, all the ads that keep being thrown in your face, right? There's this dopamine hit that literally shopping and spending some getting something into your home feels good for a moment. And so when we are having a hard time financially, we look for those dopamine hits. This is the same reason why we overeat. This is the same reason why we might have addictions, alcohol, drugs, sex, so many things that are unhealthy, right? Because we're looking for that dopamine hit. Stress and anxiety, depression, right? Decision fatigue plays a huge part in this because spending money is it's it's a coping mechanism, right? It helps you feel like you're navigating the situation a little bit better because it's an action that you're taking, and that action immediately feels pretty darn good, right? And my business name is keeping up with the Joneses for the financial coaching. I know this is the Traveling Towards Wealth podcast, but my financial coaching business is called Keeping Up with the Joneses because of that social comparison. I wanted people to know that you could keep up with the Joneses in a really healthy way, and there's a really healthy way to do it. But social comparison is one of the things that fuels the impulse spending that fuels to you growing your debt instead of paying it off like you want. It leads to overdrafting when you're trying to feel better about money, right? So the social comparisons really hit. And I'm just gonna be. What? Those like one click buying click here and break this up into four, five, ten payments, it is fueling. I I fucking hate them. Let me just be honest. I hate those options. I don't offer those options for a reason. I offer some payment options, but we talk about it, how it fits and why it's important and those types of things. But if you're buying a pair of shoes, to break a $50 pair of shoes up into four payments, my friend, there is an easier way to buy those shoes. Having a payment on that is causing you more anxiety, it's causing you more financial stress and overwhelm. It is not worth it. It's not worth it. And that's what I'm here to do. I'm here to teach you how to do it in a way that feels worth it. I'm here to teach you a way that you can handle your money, you can put your money together and plan it out and do the things that actually bring value and joy and peace and confidence to your life instead of the guilt and the shame and the restriction and the overwhelm. Right? Oh. Let me take a breath here. I get so fired up on this because impulse spending, it does happen, but it doesn't have to happen. It and and it doesn't have to happen in a negative manner, right? A lot of impulse spending happens and it's related to behavioral patterns, right? You open up the bank account on your computer, you open up the app on your phone, you're like, oh yay, it's payday, I can afford this, it's only 20 bucks. Let me just get it real quick, because 20, it's only, it's quote unquote, only $20. And in the meantime, you've forgotten about some school fees that are coming up. In the meantime, you've forgotten about another bill that's due. A lot of times this the impulse spending happens when you don't have a real clear plan with your money and you don't see a way because everything feels so overwhelming. You're looking for that dopamine hit, that when you don't see a clear way to get out of the stuff, when you don't see a clear way to get out of the piles and piles of debt, it makes more room for the impulse. Again, it's because it's that action that you can take and that you get that dopamine hit, even though later on, and most of the time it's very soon afterwards, you feel like shit, your body doesn't recognize that at first, right? There's the the emotional side of this is exhausting. It's exhausting because you get the high of buying, you get the high of the purchase, you get the high of, and I'll even include in this impulse spending, not just purchases per se, but like helping somebody out when they ask for $20 to do this, or $30 to do this, or I need $50 for this. We get that high of helping somebody else, but it's just a temporary mood boost, right? It's this temporary sense of control or escape from our current situation. We don't want to have to tell somebody, I can't afford to help you right now. We don't feel like we can say, I don't have it in my budget to send you to the movies right now. We don't wanna, we don't want to tell our kids, no, we're not going to the gas station for some extra drinks today. So you start out with this high of buying. So again, it's a temporary mood booster, and then you get the crash that comes, the shame, the regret, the stress, the overdrafts, the additional debt payment now. Because what was once just $20 now has turned into five, six, seven, eight, a thousand dollars a month into extra payments, and you're not making that much money. That $30, that $100 that you sent a friend to help them out do whatever, now has turned into you not being able to pay your electric bill. That cycle goes on this repeating loop. You keep doing it, you keep doing it, you keep doing it. Even though you know better, it's because you're chasing that next high, and then the crash happens, and then you chase the next high. And there's a lot of noise out there when it comes to putting together a budget. I don't call it a budget, but most of the world does. There's a lot of noise out there, there's a lot of information you Google and you're gonna come up with a million different free templates and downloads and apps to use and ways to go about it. And you're like, I just want the first fucking step. I just want, just tell me what to do, please. And that's because that cycle, it's creating a whole lot of negative financial impact for you, and it's overwhelming because you don't know where to start, and so you try, and because you don't know where to start, and because everything feels so overwhelming to make changes, we we start to reinforce. Oh, it's only $20 here, but that adds up, right? Those cash flow leaks add up. There's so many hidden costs to to impulse spending, missed goals, the stress of feeling broke all the time, not paying your necessary bills. It's like that financial impact then affects the emotional impact. It affects your relationship, right? If you're married, think about how this impulse spending affects your relationship. Oftentimes it's devastating. Sometimes it's both of you doing it in different areas, sometimes it's one of you, and that's a whole cycle in of itself, right? But I want to bring a little bit of hope here to you. So if you are an impulse spender, I want to bring a little bit of hope into this situation, and I want to share that there's ways that you can start to break the cycle or start to be more aware of this. And one thing that I would love for you to do from the get-go, first of all, I will say schedule a complimentary call with me. Schedule that call, just have a conversation that can provide you some insight right off the bat. Secondly, start to track some of your triggers. When, where, why are you spending impulsively? What are the stores that you spend impulse impulsively with? Is it Amazon? Is it some of the makeup subscription things? Is it TikTok shop? Where are you seeing that you are spending impulsively? When is that happening? Why is it happening? What apps, what websites are you using most often? All right, so I want really start tracking it. Start being aware of what those patterns are, start being aware of what are the sites that you tend to go to. What time of day are you placing these orders? What time of day are you shopping? What day of the week? Tracking this can be incredibly helpful. Women, where are you at in your menstrual cycle? That shows you a ton of data on your impulse spending. Right? Notice those patterns, and then I really would love for you to start tracking those what was going through your head when you made that purchase. What were you thinking? What did you feel right away when you did it? What did you feel right afterwards? What did you feel when you received it? What did you feel when you looked at your bank account again? Track that information. And listen, don't I'm sorry, but don't tell me. Sarah, it takes so long. Fuck taking long. Your finances is a long game here. This is a long-term situation. You want to work longer hours, you want to put in more hours, you want to constantly be stressed out. Let me tell you, I guarantee that is costing you more time in overwhelm stress, weight gained, relationship stress, than the time that it's gonna take you to track some of these triggers and to collect some of this data. You get to choose your heart, as they say. You get to choose where you're spending your time. And then you can move into when you're looking at some of these triggers, you get to then take the next option and to start. Really, you're like creating friction, you're making it more uh difficult to make that purchase. Delete the apps off your phone. Delete Amazon off your phone. Delete it. Delete TikTok off your phone. Yep, I said it. Unattach any payment information you have to any of the websites that you go to often. Disable Apple Pay, Google Pay, Google Wallet, whatever it's called. I don't even know what it's called. Take your payment options off those apps so it's not a one-click buy. Take it off. Disable that. So you have to go through more steps. Give yourself a window. Hey, I want this. Give yourself a window. Listen, I'm gonna wait 48 hours before I make this purchase. I'm gonna make sure that I'm checking in with my money plan here. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself the option to say no to this because you would rather say yes to something else. You would rather say yes to putting money in your peace of mind fund. Give yourself the opportunity, the gift to say no to this impulse purchase. Because you would rather say yes to paying a debt off instead. You would rather take that $40 and put it towards one of your debts instead. Because that's actually gonna feel a little bit better for you in the long term. It's probably gonna feel better for you in the short term, too. But give yourself the opportunity to see that. You haven't yet. Because you're still focused on the impulse buying, right? Getting something new. Focus on the impulse of okay, instead of, I worked with a client for a while that was going and buying a bottle or two of wine every night. Got off work, would go to the store, buy a bottle or two or one of wine. And so what we decided was this client didn't want to continue drinking that much. And I said, every time you feel the impulse to go and spend money, if you're willing to go to the store, you're willing to take that time to go to the store, you're willing to spend the nine, the fifteen, the twenty-eight dollars on a bottle or two of wine, give yourself the gift of transferring that money right into your savings account instead, right into your piece of mind fund. So you get the dopamine hit of doing something that's beneficial to you. You've taken an action with your money. Right. Another thing you can do is unsubscribe from the marketing emails. Right? Unsubscribe from them. You're not gonna miss out on anything. Your favorite brands are going to be there. You do not need to receive six emails a day from your favorite brands letting you know what's on sale, what the new arrivals are. Quit relying on motivation to do this. Quit relying on willpower to do this. Give yourself the opportunity to actually take the right kind of actions. So get rid of those distractions. Get rid of the shiny billboards. Unsubscribe from those emails. Guess what? I promise you, you're not gonna forget what your favorite brands are. They're gonna be there. You don't need to receive the emails all the time. And another thing that I say, and this really only works if you've got a really good money plan in place because we want to be really intentional with this. But my friend, you can plan to have impulse spending. You can plan to be spontaneous. Plan free money in your money plan each month. Plan ahead for it. Give yourself the opportunity to go out and buy that coffee if you want. Give yourself the opportunity to buy some new craft supplies. Give yourself the gift of being able to buy a new book. Plan for it. Tell yourself this is how much I want to spend, this is why this is important. I'm gonna do this so that I can then do whatever else. What does it allow you to do? Your money plan is that permission slip to do the things that are important for you. So plan for free money. And you know what? Maybe it's five dollars. Give yourself that gift. Maybe it's 50. Maybe it's 500. Depends on your money plan, depends on what goals you're working on, depends on where you're at. Give yourself that free money to go out and to do something fun, to have that impulse spend. Plan for it. You don't have to. That's why here we don't live in restriction. We don't use restriction. We use intention, we use goals, we don't focus on creating something that feels good right this second. We focus on what is it that I want? How do I want to feel tomorrow? What do I want to do today that will have me feeling really fucking good tomorrow? That's what we do here. When you're putting it into your money plan, you need to be asking yourself, does this align with my values? Does this align with my goals? How much am I putting towards this free money? How much am I putting in my hobbies bucket? And why am I making this decision? Does it align with my goals? How does this help me? Go through the process. I absolutely hate if you've listened to anything, you have heard me say I hate this wants versus needs conversation. Fuck that. Dude, you are allowed to want things. You're allowed to spend money on things that you want. It's not just about your needs, quote unquote, your needs. This is about your values. This is about how do you want to feel today and tomorrow and next year and 15. Years from now. This conversation isn't just how do I want to feel in the next five minutes? Because that's not serving you. This conversation is what do I value so that I can feel good tomorrow, next year, and ten years from now. Keep your values visible. You need that reminder because there are going to be really hard moments with this. Said it before. This isn't meant to be like always fun. It's not meant to be always easy either. Some of this is going to be difficult, but you're already living in difficult. You're already living in difficult. So why not live in difficult and actually be reaching your goals versus living in difficult and getting farther and away from your goals and feeling more financial stress? Yeah, well, if it were me, and I've done it before several times, I'm going to choose a more difficult knowing I'm getting closer to my goals. That is, this is the work that I do with my clients. This is why we create custom, flexible plans versus this crazy build your zero-based budget. Here's your free downloaded template and just put income and expenses in it should equal zero. That doesn't give you the information that you need. Or you've probably heard, well, just spend below your means. What the fuck does that even mean? I'm not spending above my means. We don't do that kind of language and that kind of work here. What we do is we look at what your goals are, we look at how you want to feel tomorrow. And we build your money plan so it aligns with that, so it gets you closer to that. We build in free money so you're removing the shame and the guilt. So you're still reaching your financial goals, and you get to do the things that feel good and allow you to have some of the impulse spending. If that's something like that sounds pretty darn intriguing, schedule that call with me. The link to schedule, my calendar link is in the show notes. Send me a DM, send me a message, email, and let's connect. Let's chat about this because impulse spending doesn't need to be ruining your financial goals. It doesn't need to be contributing to the negative pieces of your relationship and the it doesn't need to be fueling the guilt and the shame that you're already feeling. You can impulse spend in a really healthy way, and I want to be able to help you do that. But in order for that to happen, you need to take action, you need to reach out to me, you need to book a call with me. I have a lot of clients that struggle currently that I'm working with, brand new clients, and ones that I've worked with in the past that have really struggled with impulse spending. We do it in a way that you don't feel deprived. Mindset, beliefs, behaviors, those emotional aspects, the physical it all plays a part. So we untangle that and we build a plan that you feel good about that allows you to feel good today and tomorrow and next year. So take some of those actions. Take some of those actions that I gave you. Track your triggers. When? Where? Why are you spending? How does it feel when you spend money, when you're buying these things, when you're giving these dollars? How does it feel in the moment? How does it feel the next day? Unsubscribe from all the emails that are just throwing all the new deals and all the limited time offers your way. Unattach your payment method of payment from any website. Uninstall the apps from your phone. Get them off. Quit relying on willpower to do this for you. Willpower is gonna fuck you over every single time. Willpower is a terrible thing to rely on. Instead, I want you to rely on a system. Your system is what carries you through the emotional ups and downs of this. Your system is your money plan and how it all works together. Right? So I would love to carry on this conversation. I would love to have you book a call with me. Let's chat about impulse spending. Let's chat about what you would rather do instead. So, with that, I will say goodbye for now, my friend. Thanks for joining me on Traveling Towards Wealth. If today's episode sparked something in you, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review, or share the show with a fellow free spirit who's ready to design a life they love. Want to dive deeper? I'd love to connect with you. Book a free call with me to chat about your money, your dreams, and your next steps. No pressure, just a real conversation. You can find the link in the show notes or on my website. And let's stay connected on socials. Follow me on Instagram or Facebook for behind the scenes RV life, money tips, and a little gypsy spirit along the way. Remember, your money, your journey, your rules. I'll see you next Tuesday for another story and some practical steps to help you travel further towards wealth, freedom, and a life you love. Until then, keep wandering, keep growing, and keep spending on what matters most.