Here’s Why Everyone Has an “Impulse Journal”

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to be smarter with your finances, you definitely need new tools and resources to help you do this. One of them is an impulse journal, which can be as simple as a sheet of paper in which you will track the impulse purchases you decide not to make. You can make it as a part of your journal or keep a separate paper by your side at all times, and it can help you a lot if you struggle with impulse purchases and want to save money by reducing them.

Once you get the urge to buy something that’s not really a necessity but rather something fun that you want, you enter it into your journal. You can use columns that say what the item is, how much it costs, why you feel you need it, the date when you first wanted to buy it, etc.

From there, you’re free to develop your own system that uses these items as “rewards”. Depending on the actual items and their values, you may decide to splurge on one of them every month, or perhaps to make them your rewards for successfully completing a project or anything else that makes sense to you.

Not only this will save you money in the long run, but you’ll get more joy out of the limited number of items that have meaning instead of simply buying anything that catches your attention.