How to Minimize Impulse Buying on Family Shopping Trips

“Mom, Dad, can we buy this?”  This is a question parents are frequently confronted with and can be the start of a slippery slope towards an impulse purchase. It’s an easy trap to fall into — especially when you have persistent kids. In a report by RetailWire, researchers found that impulse buying is more frequent when parents are with their children versus when they’re alone. But stopping impulse buying on family shopping excursions isn’t as simple as telling your child no, or you shopping alone. Instead, it should be an opportunity to teach your kids how to replace the temptation of impulse buying with healthier habits.

Teach Them How to Budget

Your kids are never too young to learn how to budget. News outlet CNBC has reported that receiving financial education early in life can reduce the likelihood of acquiring payday loans and improve wealth accumulation by age 25. That said, you don’t have to sit your child down and bore them with bookkeeping. Instead, you can teach them practical methods that they can easily understand and carry on in adulthood. To illustrate, you could teach them via playtime by pretending to go grocery shopping together. Alternatively, you can also give them their own budget and show them how they can spend it in a store. This way, they’ll experience how money is spent, kept, and allocated effectively for different purchases. If you’re using Guardian Savings, you can help them set up a budget by creating a spending jar and encourage them to not spend more than what is in the jar for the month. 

Differentiate Between Needs and Wants

There is a fine line between need and want, and it’s almost imperceptible for kids. In Meredith Gallo’s previous post, she explains that the best way to differentiate the two for children is to lay out real-life examples. For instance, while food and shelter are needs, cellphone upgrades and ice cream are wants. Because marketing and society have made it seem like everything under the sun is an absolute need, it may also help to make distinctions between minimal needs and excessive wants. A good way to frame this for kids is to provide nuanced situations. Gallo illustrates this by explaining that while a minimal need is basic clothing, an excessive want is a novelty T-shirt. By giving clear examples, kids will have a better idea of how to weigh the importance of their purchases.

Cut Out Emotional Spending

Regardless of age, plenty of purchases are driven by emotions rather than logic. In parents, this can manifest as buying spontaneous gifts to appease or reward a child. Meanwhile, in children, emotional spending can mean buying that new toy out of envy for their peers. According to the personal finance resource AskMoney, which has plenty of articles about budgeting, these purchases fall under emotional spending. As such, they tend to be perceived as a form of self-care. However, it’s important to note that self-care doesn’t always have to cost anything. By tying your emotional satisfaction with purchases, you can create a costly cycle of equating “feeling better” with shopping. Rather than giving in to these urges, next time, try to distance yourself and your child from the item(s) in question. This way, you can both determine whether this is simply an impulsive band-aid solution to your emotions or something with long-term benefits. You may be surprised that more often than not, it’s the former.

Expose Them to DIY-ing

In a 2020 survey by OnePoll, the average American parent revealed that their kids say “I’m bored” about six times a day. As it happens, boredom is another prime cause for impulse buying. Because shopping is entertaining, many families use it as a form of escapism. But this, once again, only creates an unhealthy dependence on spending money to be happy. Instead of using shopping as entertainment, expose your children to the fun of doing things themselves. If they want to buy a toy car, show them how to make one with cardboard instead. If they’re craving doughnuts, why not cook up a batch together? Channeling your kids’ boredom into more productive in-person pursuits, like crafting, reading, or playing, can reduce shopping obsessions and give them some new hobbies!

Teaching your kids about money matters may initially be met with some indifference. However, with a little patience and ingenuity, they'll slowly but surely adopt habits for a healthier financial future. If you're looking for more tips and tricks to help you raise financially literate kids, check out our other resources on Guardian Savings.