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Shopping -
Everything Else
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Written by Azn Frou-Frou Gal
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Friday, 02 October 2009 11:48 |
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Page 1 of 2
When you're in sales, whether at the department store perfume counter or at the auto dealership, the single most profitable person you will have is the impulse buyer. Salespeople absolutely love impulse buyers. When the desire is high, rational thinking goes out the window. If you are going to learn how to be cheap, get ready to control your impulses and keep a rational mind.
The other day my girlfriends and I met for lunch at a nearby mall. As we were walking out, one friend spotted a dress, "that she just had to have." Five minutes later, she emerged from the dressing room and five minutes after that the signature was on the credit receipt and we were on our way. If it wasn't for the register display, I wouldn't even know how much that dress was, but it came to the tidy sum of $186. I didn't see a sale sign so I assume that it was full price. $186 for a dress, that's like 10 days of groceries! Now my friend isn't poor, but she surely isn't rich nor even say, upper middle class. I don't mean that she needs to talk to her husband about buying a dress, but it's not exactly what I would term a "routine" purchase. I have to imagine that when that credit card bill gets looked at it's going to cause a bit of a stir.
What gets me about this is that my friend has confided in me before that things lately have been a little "tight" because her husband's work stopped giving bonuses and there were no raises this year. Well, I can see why things are tight when she's blowing nearly $200 in a five minute spree!
The credit card is the great enabler of impulse purchases. Even if she had $100 in her purse, she wouldn't have been able to buy that dress. If she was paying in cash, she would have to think about the price and decide whether she was going to give up all those bills for something that she might wear two or three times. A good way to cut down on your impulse purchases is just to leave your credit cards at home unless you are going some place where you really are going to need it.
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