Record every unplanned purchase for two weeks and use the record to find your triggers.
Before your next purchase, make a new note on your phone or open an empty spreadsheet, and put seven headings across the top: date and time, item, amount, payment method, place or app, trigger, feeling. For the next two weeks, every purchase you hadn't planned goes in as a row, and this seven-column log of unplanned purchases is your spending diary.
Most adults can give you a rough figure for what they spend each month. Very few can tell you why their unplanned spending happens. The reasons usually lie in the circumstances of each purchase: what time it was, where you were, what you had been doing a moment earlier, and your mood. You can change those circumstances once you know them, and the one dependable way to find them is to note them down while each purchase is still recent.
Choose a format you have with you whenever you pay. You'll add rows standing at a shop counter, on the MRT or lying in bed, so a notes app or a basic spreadsheet on your phone tends to work better than a notebook that stays at home.
Date, item, amount, payment method and place or app need no thought. The other two columns carry most of the value. A trigger is whatever happened right before you decided to buy. It might be a notification, a colleague proposing a group order, passing a shop, an email announcing a sale, feeling worn out after work, or scrolling in bed. The feeling column takes a word or two for your state at that moment: bored, stressed, happy, lonely, rewarded, rushed.
You met the payment method column in lesson 4.1. Writing it down means you can see later whether your unplanned buying gathers around stored card details, BNPL or a single app.
Use this test: if you did not plan the purchase that morning, it is an unplanned purchase and it gets a row. A lunch you set out intending to buy is planned, so leave it off. If you planned to spend S$8 on lunch (an example figure) and the bill came to S$22, write down the gap between the two. Anything added on top of a planned purchase is logged at its full amount, so if you went into a pharmacy for shampoo and also picked up S$30 of other items, you record the whole S$30.
When in doubt, include it. Small amounts deserve a row because they are the ones you repeat. A S$6 bubble tea bought three times a week adds up to S$18 a week, and over a year that comes close to a thousand dollars.
Begin today, or on your next payday if it is only a few days away. Fourteen days takes in a payday, two weekends and the normal working days around them.
Add each row within a few hours of paying. If you leave it until night, you'll be guessing at the trigger and the feeling, and those two columns are the main reason for keeping the diary.
Carry on spending the way you usually do. If you pass on purchases because you don't want to log them, the diary will show fewer triggers than you really have. Write down every purchase truthfully and keep your routine the same for the two weeks. The diary is for finding triggers, and changing them comes afterwards, when any changes will work far better because you know the three situations to point them at.
On day 14, sort the rows by the trigger column and add up the amounts under each trigger. Some triggers will be the same thing under different labels, so combine them. "Instagram ad", "TikTok shop" and "scrolling", for instance, most likely belong together as social media during downtime. Next, go through the feeling column inside each group. Where a trigger always appears with the same feeling, make a note of it, since the feeling may be what is really driving the purchase.
Darren recorded 17 unplanned purchases across the fortnight, adding up to S$462. Sorting put them into four groups:
Late-night scrolling in bed: 5 purchases, S$186, every one through an app with a saved card, each feeling recorded as "bored" or "tired". After drinks or a long day: 4 purchases, S$142, mostly taxis and supper deliveries, recorded as "tired" or "can't be bothered". Group orders at work: 4 purchases, S$96, each noted "didn't want to be the one who said no". Game top-ups on the MRT: 4 smaller purchases, S$38.
His three main triggers were late-night scrolling at S$186, tiredness after a long day or drinks at S$142, and group orders at S$96. Added together, S$186 + S$142 + S$96 = S$424 of his S$462 total. If those two weeks were normal for him, around S$900 a month is going on spending he never really decided on.
Two findings surprised him. He had expected sales and special offers to be his weak point, and they hardly appeared at all. He also found that most of his purchases had little to do with wanting the item and a great deal to do with the state he was in when he bought it.
Once you've named your own three triggers, you can start on fixes. Money Foundations lesson 4.3, "Small habits that slow impulse spending", goes through frictions such as waiting rules and removing saved cards. Lesson 8.2 of this course shows how to arrange your surroundings so that bad choices take longer to make.
Start the diary today, or on your next payday if it's close. Keep it for the full fourteen days, and at the end, name your three main triggers and the total you spent on each.
Keep the diary for two weeks, then write down your three main triggers and the total you spent on each.
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