Unfortunately, if we’re not careful, coupons can also seduce us into spending money rather than saving it. Retailers are experts themselves at using coupons to lure us into the store and part with our hard-earned money.
It’s a good time to master the basics of mobile money. Aready, smartphones can pay for Big Macs, Girl Scout cookies, and taxi rides. With the much-anticipated rollout of Google Wallet underway, some models will also be able to spend gift cards and pay at many more locations. Google Wallet and MasterCard PayPass, two examples of mobile money, work by storing your card data (from credit cards, prepaid cash cards, and loyalty cards) on your phone, then transmitting the info to the checkout stand when you wave or tap your device.
Frenzied buying almost never leads to smart shopping. One-day sales, midnight madness, and other sales techniques that spur quick decision-making tend to be disorienting and lead to over spending, says Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist and author of coauthor of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. “They’re training [consumers] to purchase even though they may not be ready,” she says. “If people are buying for fear or anxiety that it won’t be available, then they’re less likely to make good purchasing decisions.”
As Ron Czarnecki, a retired mattress salesman and author of the book Shop for Sleep and Survive the Bite, points out, “if you buy something online and have issues, you’re going to have a real problem resolving it because the cost of shipping a mattress back is prohibitive.” It’s much easier to return or exchange a mattress when you’re dealing with a brick-and-mortar store.
2. Make saving “cool.” Kids’ clothing is the single most expensive item on back-to-school lists, reports the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker. In fact, 6 in 10 parents say they will purchase designer labels and name-brand clothing, including sneakers and jeans, in preparation for the school year. But Reynolds says that’s not necessary. Instead, she suggests browsing magazines with your child and jointly picking a trend to recreate at home. DIY projects include hair accessories, jewelry, and accessorizing socks or backpack patches. Visiting consignment stories is another affordable option.
Sales can lead to more spending. The reason that stores hold sales is because it helps them generate revenue. They understand that if they can coax you into their stores, you’ll spend more money.
After the electrodes were in place, three participants viewed pictures of 50 different kinds of junk food, ranging from chocolate-chip cookies to M&M’s to salty chips. The participants viewed each image for one second, and then came up with a subjective value rating of the snack by bidding amounts between zero and three dollars for the item.
The system was designed to reflect personalized tastes. “With different people, it’s quite idiosyncratic in terms of what they like and dislike,” Jenison says. “The real goal here is to get them to give us an honest bid of what they value the food item to be.”
Throughout the experiment, electrodes caught the activity of single neurons in the volunteers’ amygdalae. Of the 51 neurons that the researchers tracked in the three volunteers, 16 performed in lockstep with the value of the food item, changing their activity in a predictable way as the value increased. As the value (and corresponding bid) went up, some of these neurons’ activity went up too. Others showed an inverse relationship, with their activity declining as the value increased.
Bring a list and a watch.
