Sometimes I find myself speaking about future aspirations as it concerns some areas of personal discipline that I would like to attain. For instance, I often tell myself that I would stick strictly to my budget when at the market and not buy something out of impulse. But so far, I have not been able to uphold that “aspiration” up till date.
This same thing also plagued me while I was in school as a student. I loved impulse buying a lot and I find it hard to stop myself almost every time. Most times, this caused me to go into debt in school because I just wanted to buy, buy and buy.
I had this feeling that I needed all what I was buying even though in reality that was untrue. This continued like a cycle until my third year. I was determined not to buy on impulse or on credit from students who were hawking wares from lecture halls to lecture halls and from hostels to hostels.
These wares were both essentials like underwear, cosmetics and dresses while others were not so essential like jewelry, wristwatches, scarfs, shoes and bags. Whenever someone came with ”I have something to nice here to sell”, my interest was piqued.
This habit became ingrained in me because I always had a steady supply of cash from my family. So no matter what I bought, there was always hope for money to come in. But in my third year, things changed when tragedy struck one of my wealthy relatives who was also a sponsor in my education and from then on, the income supply wasn't so steady anymore.
I told myself that I would try to curb impulse buying and buying things on credit but by the second semester, I fell back into that old habit up to the point that I was owing a lot of people and that was very embarrassing as I had to give several excuses to them on why their payment was delayed.
I didn't like that feeling at all as I prided myself in being honest and straight forward but there I was in a situation that was not allowing my honesty to thrive. That semester, funds were really tight. I had to run some part time hustles to get some money and pay off a major part of the debt.
That was the game changer for me. It dawned on me then that such a habit was not worth it and thankfully, I worked on curbing that impulse buying. By the time I rounded up with my schooling, I had a firm grip on the credit buying. I only bought things when I had the money available at hand.
This lie of being able to save money by stopping impulse buying didn't work out while in school. I learnt the hard way but so far, it was worth it.
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