After a night out drinking with friends, Victoria Namkung came home and sat down to do some online shopping. The year was 2002, so buying items on the Internet wasn’t common. But in her intoxicated state, Namkung decided to purchase a $500 limited-edition art piece by American artist Jeff Koons from The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
“I truly can’t recall how I got on their website and decided to order one,” says Namkung, who notes that the $500 price tag was nearly equal to her monthly rent in Los Angeles. “Usually when a 24-year-old gets drunk, [she] calls an ex-boyfriend, but I was buying modern art.”
Since she didn’t remember making the purchase, Namkung was baffled when, several days later, a cardboard box arrived at her door. It contained the porcelain collectors item, which looks like a dog, twisted into shape by blue balloons and held by a reflective plate. “It was the fanciest thing I’d ever received,” she says of the artwork, which was packaged in a white case with Koons’ name embossed across the top.
Years later, Namkung decided to have the blue balloon dog insured and appraised and was shocked to learn it had gained value since she made her boozy buy more than a decade earlier. Today, she estimates, it’s worth about $20,000. Her only regret? That she didn’t buy 10 more.
[See: 8 Big Budgeting Blunders — and How to Fix Them.]
While intoxicated impulse shopping worked out for Namkung, it isn’t always such a positive experience.
Making unplanned or unnecessary purchases can bust your budget, run up your credit card bill or become an unsustainable habit. For some people, drinking and shopping may be a funny excuse to buy themselves a silly gift. But for others, it can become a serious problem.
In the U.S., nearly half of adult alcohol drinkers say they’ve made a purchase while intoxicated, according to a February 2018 survey of 2,000 adults commissioned by Finder.com, a comparison site for financial products and tools. From the self-reported data, Finder calculates that Americans have spent more than $30 billion on these boozy buys, or about $448 per person, more than double from the year before.
The increasing temptation to engage in alcohol-soaked consumerism comes from several recent developments, experts say. Before the advent of the Internet, most shoppers had to head to a brick-and-mortar store. But in today’s e-commerce market, buzzed buyers can make purchases from the comfort of their home or mobile phone. There’s no designated driver required or risk that they’ll be thrown out of a shop by an annoyed salesperson. Its frequency has even inspired the tongue-in-cheek phrase “Don’t drink and Prime,” which refers to Amazon Prime’s tempting shopping service.
In addition, popular shopping sites and apps store consumers’ credit card information, making it terribly simple to thoughtlessly click “purchase” when your impulse control is inhibited.
If you’re looking to reduce your inebriated impulse spending and save yourself money in the process, here are several ways to avoid drunk shopping.
[See: 10 Big Ways to Boost Your Budget — Without Skimping on Your Daily Latte.]
Uninstall shopping apps and disable alerts. A notification on her phone is what tipped off a tipsy Frances to a sale at Anthropologie. That led Frances, who asked that her last name not be used, to drunkenly buy more than $200 worth of candles, she says. She was shocked when they arrived at her door a few days later, and she had to comb through her emails to remember that she had even purchased them.
Stores may send reminders about sales or discount codes on evenings, weekends and holidays, says Jennifer McDermott, consumer advocate for Finder.com. That coincides with when some adults like to have a drink or two. To reduce temptation, unsubscribe or delete shopping emails, mobile applications and notifications to avoid temptation, says Michelle Madhok, online shopping expert and founder of deals site SheFinds.com
Delete your credit card information. To avoid spending while sauced, implement some of the same strategies you might use to dodge general impulse shopping, experts say.
That means finding ways to add an extra step between looking at an item on your phone or computer and hitting the “Buy” button. Removing your saved credit card information from websites and shopping apps or disabling 1-Click Ordering from your Amazon account are ways to add that additional hurdle.
“You want to make the barriers to entry harder,” Madhok says. “If you have to get up and go get your wallet, then you’ll say, ‘Forget it.'”
Consider return policies. Get in the habit of shopping at stores with generous return policies such as Zappos or Neiman Marcus, Madhok says. If you can make that responsible decision in your inebriated state, then you’ll at least be able to undo some of the financial damage of an unneeded drunk purchase. Avoid stores such as eBay, where getting reimbursed is difficult to accomplish.
Another method to increase the chances you can return an unwanted item is to use credit cards with return-friendly policies. For example, Madhok uses an American Express card with return protection, which claims to refund eligible purchases made on the card of up to $300 within 90 days (minus shipping and handling). Some Chase credit cards offer a similar return protection policy for qualified purchases of up to $250.
“For most things, it’s too late by the time you wake up in the morning,” Madhok says. “Use a credit card that has a good coverage and go to sites [where] you know you can return.”
[See: 8 Times to Talk to a Financial Advisor.]
Get help. Occasional boozy purchases may not be a problem. But if you find yourself routinely making unremembered drunk spending decisions or drinking more than you’d like, seek professional help. A financial therapist may be able to help you work through situations surrounding your impulsive spending. Or consider getting treatment for drug or alcohol addiction if you need to take a more aggressive approach to recovery.
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How to Avoid Drunk Shopping Binges originally appeared on usnews.com
