As humans, we've been equipped with an organ that allows us to think, although some people don't seem to use it to its full extent when they're shopping. Snakes are reptiles that receive stimuli, and usually their response is to bite; when we shop we receive stimuli and our response is to buy.
I know, you've heard this before: think about that purchase before you buy. As my late mother used to say, "Season the thought." Research has shown the more you think about doing something, the more rational the action will be. That would also include buying.
When I was young, my father had a lot of money. All I had to do was go to a toy store, point to the item I wanted, and it magically appeared in my room at home. When I was eight years old, all that went away when my father's business almost went bankrupt. At that time I had to work to earn money to buy the things I was used to having brought to me.
That involved saving money (what a concept) in order to buy the item. Then, when I would go to the store to buy the toy I had saved for (after thinking for a long time about making the purchase,) one of two things occurred: either I bought the toy and I knew it was truly mine; no one could take it away from me, no one could tell me when I could play with it, and when I discarded it (if ever,) it was threadbare. Or...I would go to the store with my money to purchase the toy, and it didn't have all that shine when I first saw it, so I didn't buy it after all. I would say that even the times when I would buy the toy, it was a good decision, because I had thought it out for a long time.
Something else I learned at that time, which is the basis for the patent on which the Liquid financial application is built, is that I mentally converted the price of the object I was getting ready to buy to the time it took me to earn the money to buy it. So, if I earned $2 per hour, and the item was $4, it really cost me two hours of my time.
Not only was this another step in the decision-making process of making a purchase, which made me think more about the purchase, it established the true cost of the item. You see, the price of anything is the same to everyone, it's the cost that's totally different, the cost being the velocity the dollars roll into our pockets.
The next time you see something you really want, do you think if you thought about it for a day or two you'd still want to buy the item? Do you think if you knew how long you had to work to buy the item you might make a different decision? Do you think either or both of these strategies could save you a lot of money in the long run?