Questions to ask yourself this sales season

Did I already want or need this thing? Where will I store it? Do I have a track record of getting good use out of/using up similar things? + expert advice from Dr Melissa Norberg.

This time last year, I wrote a piece for the Guardian on how to navigate the onslaught of sales season in a cost-of-living crisis.

12 months down the track, and Singles Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day, and the litany of other sales feel just as overwhelming. They can be a well-timed opportunity to save money on Christmas presents and well-considered purchases. But also an all-too-tempting trap to overspend on a bunch of things you want but don’t need, half-want, used to want and then forgot about, or have magically decided to want in response to seeing it on sale.

I spoke to Dr Melissa Norberg for last year’s story, an associate professor in psychology whose expertise is in hoarding, panic buying and identifying online shopping problems. She urged people to make a shopping list, stick to it, and exercise muscles of restraint and discomfort - we don’t need to (indeed, we shouldn’t) buy everything we like or want.

I find beauty sales the hardest to resist. The category is wrapped up in pressures around appearance and youth, our sense of self, and choices around how we show up in the world. So it’s no surprise that Dr Norberg noted that stores like Sephora and MECCA pull people in with their knowledgeable staff, samples, and loyalty programs.

“We feel cared about,” Dr Norberg explained, and, “Consumers are much more likely to buy from someone that cares about them.”

The problem is when “we might start to desire those freebies more than the products we initially wanted.” For example, buying something in-store or online while redeeming a Beauty Loop or birthday ‘gift’, placing an order to maintain or improve your loyalty program status, or going in store to replace a lip liner and deciding to buy a “nice lipstick that looks good with the lip liner” too.

Beauty purchases “make us feel good, and this psychological function can often outweigh the functional value of the product,” Dr Norberg warned. “In other words, I don’t need another tube of lipstick.”

One of the useful and practical tips Norberg offered up was the encouragement to pause before you buy something, and ask yourself questions about the role the object will actually play in your life. Doing so bridges the gap between fantasy and reality. For example, I love to imagine myself as regular red lipstick wearer. I’d have a signature crimson shade. I’d be very chic. And lipsticks in that colour - punchy burgundy, fire engine tomato, scorching orange - always look so alluring. But every red lipstick I’ve ever owned has languished in the back of a drawer - too intimidating, too impractical, too divorced from how I actually like to look day-to-day.

So, in the spirit of pausing, here are a series of questions to ask yourself as your finger hovers above the ‘complete purchase’ button, or your stomach roils with funny feelings about sales and spending and money:

• Can I afford it? Will I notice this amount of money being gone? Will it mean I can’t spend money on something equally or more important to me?

• Do I want or need this thing? (A tenth tube of lipstick that looks identical to the ones you already own is different to replacing a drawer of stretched out, tired underwear.)

• Did I already want or need it, before noticing it was on sale?

• How long have I wanted it for?

• If I’ve wanted it for a long time, was I planning on buying it now/soon? Or is it a purchase I was still considering, thinking about making down the track?

• Is the discount significant enough to impact that timing? (If a $100 item is 20% off, would you rather save $20 now, or buy the item at a time that best suits you?)

• Would I buy it if it wasn’t on sale?

• Where will I store it? Do I have room for it already, or will I need to make room? (This question is a great one for realising your wardrobe or makeup drawer may already be overstuffed. How will this new item make that collection better or more useful?)

• If I’m upgrading or improving upon something I already own, am I willing to sell or give away the version I have? If that version isn’t old and worn out, why hasn’t it fulfilled its potential?

• If I own similar versions, what would this new version offer that I don’t already have?

• Do I have a track record of getting good use out of/using up similar things? How quickly or slowly have I done that?

• How often will I use it?

• How long will I use it for?

• How long will it last? (This speaks to questions of quality, craftsmanship, maintenance or care, and perishability/expiry dates.)

• Will I be able to pass it on to someone else once I’m finished using it, or no longer want it?

I hope these questions offer a chance not to judge yourself, but to pause and breathe and think. This stuff isn’t going anywhere. If it sells out, it’ll probably be back (there’s a whole other conversation to have around holiday sets and ‘limited edition’ items…). If you wait a week, or a month, or longer, and you still want the thing, you’ll probably be happy enough to pay full price for it, or find that another sale is just around the corner (they always are). But there‘s every chance the desire will have evaporated.

As Dr Norberg told me a year ago: “Once we are aware of how our emotions can trick us into thinking that we need things that we don’t, we can set limits for ourselves and better hold ourselves to those limits. In most cases, the urge to buy will dissipate shortly after we turn our attention to something else.”

How are you feeling about the crush of sales, and presents, and temptation? How do you decide which sales to partake in, which to skip, and what to buy?

Until next time,

Britt