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5 Tricks I Used to Quit My Shopping Addiction
If you’re struggling to spend less, try these tactics.
In the aftermath of COVID-19, with Amazon Prime online ordering and TikTok Shop gaining popularity, shopping addictions are more common than ever. According to Fool.com, the average American had $6,501 of credit card debt in 2023. When you consider that Lending Tree reports 53% of Americans did not at any point carry a credit card balance in 2023, that implies a staggering amount of debt for the 47% who did.
Bad shopping habits are nothing new to me. Before the world ever heard of COVID or TikTok, I was pathologically scrolling Tumblr, reblogging photos of beautiful nonbinary people I wanted to look like. My best friend and I would spend all day in shopping malls, buying clothes and taking photos of each other trying to look as good as the people we saw online. Sometimes, it felt for fleeting moments like we were succeeding, but most days, it was an exercise in futility.
Even worse, this exercise left us with huge amounts of consumer debt. At one point, my Capital One Quicksilver balance was over $8,000. I would work hard to pay down my balance, but then next month I’d run it up all over again.
That was years ago. Now I have 8 credit cards with much higher limits, and I pay all of them off every…
