Holiday Shopping Awareness Increases Financial Budget Control

Why do we need to have holiday shopping awareness? How can awareness help us control our financial budget?

Why would we want to do this? One reason is to increase shopping control. The second reason is to decrease holiday debt and the negative financial struggles faced afterward.

For many, holiday shopping has begun and the financially endowed have already finished.  While the majority are anxiously awaiting for Black Friday. The marathon of retail racing to get the best deals for their budgets. This American retail experience has customers competing while shopping and impulsively buying to get the best deals of the holidays. How does this produce responsible, mature, and logical financial control?

Give a gambler a dollar. They will spend their dollar and want yours. Give an alcoholic a drink. They will drink theirs and wants yours. Give a toddler some candy and they will want your candy too.

Emotionally impulsive and competitive behaviors do not belong in the retail arena together. There is nothing positive that will ever come from these high stressed and high traffic atmospheres of kindred types who do not manage money wisely nor maturely and safely shop.

It there anything positive that can come from shopping in a marathon as Black Friday has become? How many injuries will occur? How many preventable accidents or deaths occur? How many will enjoy the highs of this fast shopping day and suffer with regret when viewing credit card statements or will hate the deep lows produced by the fast highs?

The psychology of money is a valid awareness topic. Why? Our emotions can burn through our money like gasoline used as an accelerator in a fire. It does feel good when shopping without making a conscience decision financially. But our consequence of money details our emotional state, psychological state, and physical ability to control money. Our emotions reveal the lack of self-control we honestly have.

We like to feel the intense warmth of happiness produced by a good time. We enjoy seeing the happiness in the eyes we gift too, even if; we cannot afford it. We enjoy giving happy reactions. We enjoy receiving happiness. But how much of the financial stress is good for receiver or giver, in the end results? What does competitive holiday spending and impulsive gift giving really produce in consequence?  

Our emotions tell us that we want the best of material possessions for self and to gift to others. We want to

produce happiness and contentment that comes from owning nice things. However, rationally and logically; we tend to frown on the mature and responsible things that we need to do with our money that limits our spending abilities. In reality, our emotional relationship with money should be reversed. To teach and give emotional fulfillment that is not obtainable through careless acts of spending money.

It is the receiver who must decide to spend rationally and logically by giving gifts they can afford. It is the giver who must have empathy and forgiveness to a logical and rational financial spender who does not gift to them what they cannot afford.

A giver must teach values of money through example. A receiver must give without feeling bad for not affording more. 

This is why money is complex. Our psychological and emotional affiliation with money will affect us personally and this does affect others.

Valid and reality based emotional values are truths of our money. This real gifts will not monetary tainted or discarded as last year’s gifts. These are the truest of building blocks of enjoying and sharing the holidays. This is what we need to learn,achieve, and give in the holidays.

Money US News teaches us about Six Danger Signs of Emotional Spending.

1. Seeking immediate gratification.
2. Justifying purchase with “I deserve it!”
3. Spending because of financial woes.
4. Shopping to decompress from stress.
5. Competing with family, friends, or co-workers.
6. Buying and returning more items than you keep.

Money US News gives us a hard dose of awareness of emotional shopping. Perhaps, holiday shopping is as much for our pleasure, as it is about giving anything to anyone else. Consider the facts. Is the holiday shopping experience about you?

Will this holiday shopping experience create a positive consequence or a negative consequence? Only each can decide.

Psychology Today teaches us how to be in-control as rational shoppers. Be aware.

Eyes – Colors create more than a scene.

Nose – Smells make a direct hit to emotional centers of our brain.

Ears – If you’ve ever watched a movie with a soundtrack, you know the power of music to create moods and intensify emotions.

Heart – “I feel like I’m going to miss out or they’ll get the deal before me.”

Touch – We’re significantly more likely to buy what we touch.

The five senses in our human bodies react differently in each of us.

Some can see with their eyes and never lust in their heart nor become depressed because they cannot have it. Some will see with their eyes and resort to crime to fulfill what their heart wants.

Some can smell with their nose and the aroma is pleasant for some or produce nausea in others.

Ears can hear the same song. One will laugh. One will cry.

Our emotions react differently by the stimuli around us. Our emotions are influenced by others around us.

For some, being with others is a blessing and for others, it is a saddening or traumatic experience. The human touch can make us cringe at what we physically feel or it can propel us to enjoy the material items we touch.

Our senses do play a key role in how we get caught up in the emotional and psychological elements of the holiday season. These things contribute to how we shop and how we spend our money.

How many are still paying for items purchased from last year’s holiday season? How many will be in debt from this holiday season? When does the debt end? When will we seek to give and teach gifts that are greater than the value of a dollar or a penny?

Emotions change every second. Material items we value this year will not hold the same emotional value next year. It takes analyzing, problem solving, and being a rational active person to stay in control of holiday spending. To increase our holiday budgets and control our finances is to look for ways to spend wisely and maturely. To give gifts that are not of the latest trends will always be the hardest obstacle to overcome in holiday spending by decreasing temporary temptations to increase permanent positive results. Create and give gifts that will hold value this holiday season and provide purpose for many more years to come.

We seek to gift from a sale ad. When in reality, most want more than money cannot buy. Try giving more emotional heart of the holidays by spending less money. Focus on being in financial control to give from the heart. Lead the responsible example of financial budget control. These gifts will last a lifetime. Temporary gifts never will.