As every year, stores announce Black Friday discounts. What can be an opportunity to save can turn into the exact opposite: to spend more than we can afford. A specialist in financial education, and a psychologist come with recommendations on how we can buy usefully and efficiently.
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Adrian Asoltanie: Black Friday can be an excellent opportunity or an expensive financial trap
A list of priorities and a realistic budget backed by market research can make all the difference in your pocket and on your card this Black Friday. Adrian Asoltanie, entrepreneur and specialist in financial education says:
“Black Friday can be an excellent opportunity to purchase necessary and long-lasting products at a very good price, but it can also be an expensive financial trap. The shopping list must start from real needs, the recommendation would be to focus on more consistent purchases (household appliances, electronics, vacations) and less on impulse consumer products (clothes, cosmetics, gadgets, toys).
It would be ideal to be prepared beforehand with a product research (model, prices) and to have the money saved for these purchases. Otherwise, on large purchases there will be a temptation to put on the card – future debts. It is not an economic period suitable for accumulating debts, but, on the contrary, for reducing them.
The needs are obviously a priority, especially in periods of economic and financial uncertaintyA“.
Adrian Asoltanie, entrepreneur, speaker and specialist in financial education
Beware of impulse purchases
Instead of saving money, discounts can backfire in certain situations. If we choose to buy things we don’t necessarily need at the time, just because they are cheap that day.
,,The concept of Black Friday is based on FOMO (the fear of missing out – the fear that you won’t find it anymore, that you won’t get it anymore, that it will end.) This impulse is very strong and people end up making unnecessary or much more expensive impulse purchases than they could afford, under the pressure of the “limited” offer.
In reality, the three components of Black Friday: only one day a year / only a limited number of products / substantial discounts are often not true. Discounts are also made during the rest of the year (see spring Black Friday, Black Monday, Black Week), the products do not end like salami in Ceaușescu’s time (you can find a thousand variants, brands, models, from anywhere in the world)”. says Adrian Asoltanie.
In order not to feel cheated, it is good to know the price that the products had a few weeks or months before Black Friday. We also have to be careful where we buy from:
,,There is also the risk of “spike” when we make purchases from ghost sites – choose reputable suppliers! Paying in advance is a risk; can be avoided by paying on delivery.”
At the same time, the specialist advises us to be prepared and not to buy anything, despite the temptations, if the products do not correspond to what we wanted from the very beginning.
What the psychologist says
Jeni Chiriac, psychotherapist
Psychotherapist Jeni Chiriac also talks about the risk of buying impulsively, just for fear of missing something:
,,We discuss consumer psychology. It is made to stimulate our reward centers and cause us to buy, to have this pleasure of hunting for deals or opportunities. Unwittingly, when we enter this reward system, we are manipulable, we have no choice. If we are aware of these things, it is easier for us to resist influences.
A friend of mine needed a dress for an event and we went to a store. And I found it very interesting that the prices were red-tagged, something that made you think they were discounted. People came, went into a frenzy of searching, then stopped and asked: <
Inventory of things, a method to buy efficiently
In addition to the shopping list, the psychologist suggests that we also make an inventory of the products we have before buying others.
“We can have extra-full closets or extra-endowed house and discover during an inventory that we have a lot of things that we have used once (if we are talking about gadgets). (…) It is recommended to make an inventory of the things you own, in addition to identifying the list of needs, because sometimes needs can be irrational, have some compensatory mechanisms behind them and we don’t realize it, consider it a real need, but which is not proven by the objective part of checking the inventory list. (…)
Those who have a business know that first they go through the scrapping stage and then they buy something else. We do not make a deposit. We have to make sure we use that thing. The utility principle helps me figure out if I need an object or if I already have one that could do the exact same thing.” says Jeni Chiriac.
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Sometimes the things we buy just take up a lot of space and instead of enjoying them, they actually end up being problems.
“It’s much better to ask myself what I need, what are my needs, to create this list of things I need. And including on price criteria or on criteria of essentials, wishes or Holiday gifts”, emphasizes the psychotherapist.
What do we do with hobbies?
When it comes to passions, things can sometimes be more complicated. Because this category includes things that give us pleasure, not immediate needs. Even so, there are some aspects that, once aware of, can help us shop more efficiently. Jeni Chiriac recommends:
“The weight must be related to our lifestyle. There are people who choose to spend on hobbies in the “I’ll…” category and just buy, but don’t use. The brain confuses these stages. That is, the moment I bought, the brain can check that I did.
The principle of utility and use applies here as well. Because I also have to observe my consumption behavior. There are people who end up having a whole collection of fishing rods (20-30) and when you talk to them, maybe they have only been fishing once a year or every two years. And it doesn’t justify that amount of stuff with the weight of the activity. If I don’t follow that passion, I took it for nothing”.
