Author: contributor

When it comes to the basic meaning of the word ‘budgeting’, it simply means having a good and structured plan for your money so that you don’t run into financial problems. One of the reasons why some people may struggle with shopping addiction is that they don’t know how to budget.

While shopping addiction is a compulsive disorder that needs professional treatment, knowing how to budget is one of the quintessential treatment tips.

Here are some vital budgeting tips to help you prevent shopping addiction

Track your expenses

One of the basic ways to budget is to monitor your expenses. You might be spending impulsively on something that might be a financial constraint. When you track your expenses, you will know how much you spend so that you can be more proactive with your money.

Prioritize your expenses

People make the mistake of spending on what is unimportant and leaving the more important ones unattended. This is one of the core features of shopping addiction. It is important to have a plan for your expenses and create a priority list. This priority list will guide you anytime you want to shop so that you can attend to the crucial items before the less-important ones.

Get an accountability partner

Another essential budgeting tip is to have an accountability partner. You need someone that you can always report to when you spend beyond what you’re meant to. When you have someone you’re accountable to, it may become easier to control your spending.

Be prepared to trim your budget

You always need to prepare your mind to cut down your budget anytime you create one. Remember that you don’t always have to set the exact money apart for your expenses. Make a conscious effort to reduce your budget by looking for discounts, coupon codes, promotional offers, etc.

Set a savings target

When you have a financial goal, reducing how much and frequently you spend may become easier. You can create a weekly or monthly savings goal with a particular percentage of your income.

Do you think that your love for shopping is over the edge and that you are probably addicted? Maybe you’ve noticed that when it comes to shopping, there’s no love lost because you always want to satisfy yourself.

Then after shopping, you realize that you’ve spent more than you should, and the items you purchased don’t appeal to you anymore.

If you’re in this position, you are likely on the brink of shopping addiction. In this post, we’ll give you some tips to prevent your love for shopping from becoming a full-blown addiction.

Here are some ways to prevent shopping addiction from happening

Create a budget

One fact we cannot deny is, that there will always be a need to shop. However, when it is not controlled, we might end up spending more than we bargained for.

Therefore, it is important to create a structure that helps us shop within our limits and present wants.

Before you go out to shop, ensure you create a budget for everything you need. Then, prioritize the needs on your list.

Doing this will help you focus on the more urgent needs, and postpone the less urgent ones to a later time.

Track your bills

If you notice that you’ve been spending too much, you can find out what is ongoing by reviewing your previous expenses. You can reach out to your bank for a statement of account.

This will help you know how much money is entering your account, and the volume of money leaving. When you track your bills, you can know what you’re spending on that you shouldn’t.

Reduce your visit to online stores

Sometimes, to prevent shopping addiction, you need to reduce the time you spend on online stores. If you do this as a pastime, you might end up developing a shopping addiction.

Therefore, focus on other productive tasks and reduce the time you spend on these stores.

Reach out for help

If you feel that you are becoming addicted to shopping, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional for help. With this, you will learn coping strategies to help you keep addiction at bay.

Shopping addiction can be defined as a behavioral addiction where an individual has the compulsive desire to shop so that they can release negative emotions. Some of these emotions include stress, anger, pain, sadness, anxiety, etc.

Here are some of the signs that might indicate shopping addiction

Many unopened items in your closet

If you notice that there are several unopened items in your wardrobe or closet, you might be struggling with shopping addiction.

You have most likely forgotten that you got those items. And it is largely because they were purchased out of compulsion or obsession.

After buying those items, you discovered they were not needed, and you left them in your wardrobe.

You hide your shopping habits

Another way to know if you are addicted to shopping or not, is when you don’t want people to know about your shopping habits.

This is because they will most likely blame you for spending money on shopping. Those people who are likely to be your friends and family already suspect that you have a shopping obsession in play.

You feel anxious when you don’t shop

One prominent sign of shopping addiction is how you feel anxious anytime you don’t shop. You will feel heavily concerned that you’ve not gone shopping, and you will begin to wonder if everything is okay with you.

Anytime you feel anxious, you will find it hard to be productive because you’ve not gone shopping for a long time.

You take loans to shop

If you always take loans to go shopping, you are most likely addicted. There are chances that you can wait for some weeks or months to save up some money.

However, you are not willing to wait because you’re afraid the items will be out of stock- which is impossible in most cases. When you keep taking loans, it is a strong sign of shopping addiction.

If you are experiencing some of these signs, you need to seek help from a counselor. This would help you reduce the way you spend obsessively.

When it comes to drug addiction, it is a feature which does not only adversely affect the addict, it also affects everyone who is connected to the addict, and when the person takes the bold step towards recovery, you can be sure that his loved ones would be willing to stick close, and ensure that he regains his full health composure.

If there is someone you care about, that is suffering from addiction, you can take essential steps into ensuring that they go down the recovery road successfully, and they are given the best of support by a recovery community.

Below are four tips which would help a drug addict to recover:

• Tell the drug addict the truth: Now, there is a need for you to be truthful with the addict. It is important for you to explain that, there would be hindrances and a possible relapse, and it is up to them to ensure that they stand strong. You should also explain to them that, rehabilitation and recovery are feasible once the right steps are taken. Hence, there is a need for them to get the right perspective in order for them to remain motivated even though there are threatening challenges.

• Provide intervention: Basically, in the addiction process, intervention is defined as the necessary measures which are put in place, to ensure that the individual breaks free from addiction, and the most common form of intervention, is ensuring that the individual goes to an addiction rehab centre. An addiction professional is an interventionist, and their role is to provide guidance all through the recovery process.

• Inspire healthy habits: This is one way which you can help an addict to recover, ensure you encourage certain habits such as preparing a meal, carrying out exercises, playing games amongst others. All these are healthy habits which the addict can carry out with those around them. It is better to have the addict indulge in productive habits, rather than being left to himself.

• Exhibit patience: One of the ways whereby you can assist a drug addict to recover, it to show patience. Certainly, recovery is a long and complex process. There could be mistakes made during recovery, and they need to know that there are people who would stand by them when they do not perform as expected.

In recent times, cloth shopping has now become the order of the day, especially for teenagers and youths. Young people often crave for getting new clothes in come regular intervals, irrespective of the condition of the one they have at the moment, and the financial restraint that they may be having. However, there is nothing that makes one’s personal craving for fashion bad or illicit, such habit only needs to be constantly kept under check and control to avoid addictive tendencies.
Effects of cloth shopping
Keeping the aspect of the money involved in doing the shopping aside, giving clothes a quota of ones weekly or monthly income, time and energy doesn’t really seem to worth it. If not quickly checked it could lead to a behavioral addiction. There are more important and valuable things, that the time and resources that is being channeled toward cloth shopping could be diverted to, which will reproduce better result. One of the most apparent indications to bad shopping habit is that the individual will be experiencing constant exhausting of finances.
Manage your addiction to clothes
Some people that we know are currently being caught up in the issue of choosing a dress, changing a dress and having thoughts of what to do with some clothes. Assuming this is the way they ponder and revolve their lives around drugs instead of clothes, their lives would have been much worse. Interestingly, addiction to clothes do not call for so much alarm, as there is no risk of an immediate danger asides form the effect no one’s savings. If the individual continues in this act for a very ling time, as months and years go by. So will the addiction also develop and become very tasking and demanding.
Such urge for clothes, could come a result of some other mental and behavioral issues which has not fully manifested. Inasmuch as there is no much danger involved in cloth addiction, it still deserves a check. Addicts could try to secure counseling support form friends and families or visit a therapist.
Causes of cloth addiction
Some people just have the flare for fashion, and then they decide to invest their funds into it. Therefore, the level of a person’s flare for fashion could determine how prone such person is to its addiction.
The skill or profession of a person could determine to a reasonable percentage, how much the person would be obsessed with clothes. Artists and models have similar issues, because their profession requires them to look very presentable and current for them to thrive.