Mayank Rocks

It is very common that people who have habits of paying through debit cards often spend more than those who use cash. Now let me share a small example with you that will prove this. Let us assume that you plan to go for shopping because you need a pair of jeans but you plan to spend no more than 1000 rupees. But instead of taking cash, you take your debit card with you. And while shopping you find an attractive shirt that costs 1000 or maybe 500 and you feel like buying it. You know that your account has around 20,000 rupees savings, so you think that spending 1500 or 2000 would not be much of a big deal and you finally end up buying that shirt. You did not buy that shirt because you needed it but just because you felt attracted to it and you had money to buy it aswell. Would you be able to buy it if you had only 1000 as cash in your wallet? But only because you had a card that holds 20,000 bucks, you satisfied yourself by claiming that you are spending only 1500 or 2000 out of the 20,000 in your account which is merely 10% or less of what you have. This is a common satisfaction one gives to themselves in such situations. Some even satisfy themselves by saying that next time they will not shop or will shop less to compensate for the extra they want to spend today.

Well, this is not entirely true for everyone as a lot of people have self control, but then it is definitely valid for those who have no self control. And many times these items attract us even when we are determined to not spend anymore than what we have planned. And it is evident that if you used cash, then you would not be able to spend anything extra simply because you cannot. I have personally seen people doing this and so I know how debit cards actually lure you to spend more. I still remember the evening I was walking inside the mall and my friend asked me to come into a clothes showroom. I rejected the idea with the reason that why should we go in when we don’t have to buy anything. So he said that he knows that we won’t buy anything but just wanted to go and look at the new clothes that were present in the store. We went in and he actually ended up purchasing two shirts because he liked it so much. I tried to stop but he was too attracted towards them. And guess what? He used his card as mode of payment and the reason he gave was that recently money was transferred into his account, so he was okay with the spending. He didn’t have enough cash to buy, but only because of debit card he spent over 2000 bucks on shopping even when there was no intention of purchasing.

The only solution to control this extra spending is either make it a habit of spending only through cash whether you keep the card with you or not or just don’t keep the card at all. Leave the card at home when you go for shopping, so even if you want, you cannot spend anything extra than what the cash in your wallet can buy you. Just think that if my friend had no card in his wallet, no matter how much he wanted to buy, could he? Remember that when you keep a debit card in your wallet, you are actually carrying all the money in that account in your wallet, the only difference is that all the money in that account is being masked over by an electronic card.