While it is definitely easy to go on a shopping spree in-person in retail stores, malls, etc., it is even easier to online, not having to leave the comfort of your own home, avoiding traffic and lines in stores. To add fuel to the fire, the online retailers throw in a few additional perks that can get you to spend even more, sometimes without thinking even planning on it. Before you bleed your bank account dry by racking up your credit card and throwing your budget completely out of whack, look out for overspending online.
Free Shipping Promos
If you have Amazon Prime, then virtually every purchase you make is eligible for free shipping, but for those that don’t, like most sites, there is a minimum purchase needed to get free shipping, so if you are not yet meeting that, you could be throwing extra items in the cart just so you meet that. It is a hard pill to swallow when you see shipping costs added to the bottom line in the cart, so it is easy to keep building up that balance so you can avoid paying shipping costs, even if it ends up being what you would have spent anyways.
One-Click Buying
If there is a site that you use often where you have your information saved, you can do one-click buying where you skip the step of putting in your information, not to mention passing adding the item to your cart altogether and it is already paid for a ready to be sent to you. Do yourself a favor and don’t save credit card information to sites. It may seem like an inconvenience typing in when you make a purchase, but maybe it will give you enough time to give purchases a second thought.
AdSense
Even if you decide not to make an online purchase, click off the website, and then go onto another site, say to read the news, you can still be prompted to purchase the item you were just looking at. I just witnessed this with U2 tickets that I decided I did not need to purchase, after long thought, and left the site, only to be reminded again of the tickets looking in front of me on the site of the website and I had to talk myself out of buying tickets yet again. It’s like they know…
Giving Out Your Email Address
I can’t tell you how many times I get promo emails from sites that I have purchased from, often with free shipping, 25% off, etc., that lures me back to the site to make more purchases on items that I do not need. By not giving out your email address to these sites, you will save yourself plenty of money going forward, not to mention the emails that you have to delete every day. Sure, you may miss out on a “great deal”, but it was probably for items that you did not need to spend money on anyways and you can do without.