Close the tab and put the phone in another room for twenty minutes. Before you do, write the item and the price on a piece of paper, because that keeps the decision alive without keeping the checkout open. You are not deciding never to buy it. You are deciding not to buy it in the next twenty minutes, which is a decision you can actually make.
Do not empty the basket, and do not buy it
Both of those are ways of ending the discomfort quickly, and they both fail.
Buying ends it in eight seconds and starts everything else. Emptying the basket feels virtuous and tends to produce a bigger order two days later, because nothing has been resolved and the wanting has just been told it is not allowed.
The move is to leave the decision open and take the payment off the table. Write it down, walk away, look at it on Thursday. The overwhelming majority of these look absurd by Thursday, and the ones that do not, you buy deliberately, which is a completely different experience.
The next twenty minutes
- **Close the tab.** Not the whole browser, not dramatically. Just close it.
- **Write it down.** Item, price, date, on paper or in a note. This is the bit that makes the walking away possible, because you are not losing the thing, you are postponing it.
- **Do not leave it in the basket.** A basket is the shop's reminder system and it will email you about it tonight, tomorrow and on Friday with a discount attached.
- **Put the phone in another room.** Twenty minutes, door shut if there is one. This does more than any of the other steps.
- **Move.** Kitchen, front step, round the block. Standing up and changing the room interrupts a run-up that sitting still and resisting does not.
- **Tell somebody, if the urge is a big one.** "I nearly bought something stupid" is a complete text. It costs nothing and it takes most of the charge out of it.
Twenty minutes is not magic. It is longer than the peak of most urges and short enough to be believable while you are in one.
What the urge is actually about
Look at what happened in the hour before the basket filled up.
Most people find one of four states. Bored, with the evening empty in front of them. Wired, after a difficult day, wanting something to change now. Low, and looking for a small piece of evidence that things can be nice. Or celebrating, which is the one nobody counts because it does not feel like a risk.
The purchase is answering that state, not the need for the item. Which is why the parcel so often sits unopened in the hall for a fortnight. The relief was in the buying, and it had already been delivered before the courier was.
If you can name the state, you can sometimes answer it directly. Bored responds to occupation, not to purchases. Wired responds to movement. Low responds to a person. None of those arrive in a box. [Working out your own pattern takes a fortnight of two-line notes](/guides/spending/when-do-you-shop), and it is the single highest-value thing in this stream.
Make the next urge land somewhere harder
While you are agitated, do one lasting thing. The calm version of you always thinks it can be handled later.
**Delete the saved card from wherever you nearly bought this.** Browser autofill, the phone wallet, the marketplace account. Paying should mean getting up and finding the physical card.
**Turn off that shop's emails and notifications.** A large share of sessions start with a sale alert rather than with wanting anything.
**Set the waiting rule properly.** Pick a number you can defend. Anything over it waits seventy two hours, written down rather than basketed.
There is no self-exclusion scheme for shopping and no switch in your banking app that refuses retail, because a gambling payment can be recognised as it happens and ordinary retail carries no equivalent marker. That is why the friction has to be assembled by hand, one setting at a time. [The full list, with every place a card hides, is here](/guides/spending/putting-friction-between-you-and-checkout).
If it is a sale, a countdown or a last one left
These are the hardest urges and they are engineered to be.
The specific thing scarcity does is convert "do I want this" into "will I lose the chance", which is a different question with a much shorter fuse. You can feel it happening if you look for it.
One sentence helps: if it were full price and available all week, would I be buying it? If the answer is no, you are not buying an item, you are avoiding a small loss. Missing a deal costs nothing. Taking it costs the money.
Afterwards
If you got through it, that is the whole job. Do not spend the evening congratulating or auditing yourself, just put the note somewhere you will see it on Thursday.
If you did not get through it, that is worth almost nothing on its own and it is very much worth doing something about in the next twenty four hours. There is usually a return window, and there is a specific order to the reset. [It is set out here](/guides/spending/you-bought-it-again-what-now).
If money is what is frightening you rather than the item, StepChange is free and independent on 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. If tonight is heavier than that, Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour.
Some people find it easier to keep the waiting list, the risky hours and the person they message in one place, which is what [the recovery side of Renovyn](/my-recovery) is for. It tracks and it nudges. It does not treat anything.
Common questions
**How long does an urge to buy last?** Long enough to feel like it will not pass, and usually much shorter than that. Most people find the peak goes inside twenty minutes if they are not looking at the item, which is why closing the tab and moving the phone matters more than anything you tell yourself.
**Should I just delete the app?** Delete the app and keep the account. Deleting the account loses your order history, warranties and returns, and gets rebuilt in ninety seconds at the worst moment, which teaches you the barrier was fake. With the app gone, buying needs a browser, a login and a card you have to fetch.
**What if I actually need the thing?** Then it will still be needed in seventy two hours, and you will buy it then without the mess. Genuine needs survive a waiting rule comfortably. It is the other ones that generate the arguments about why this particular case is different.
**Is it bad to buy something to cheer myself up?** Not in itself. It becomes a problem when it is the main way you change how you feel, when it is hidden, or when the money was needed elsewhere. If you are trying to work out which side of that line you are on, [start here](/guides/spending/is-my-spending-a-problem).
Sources
- [NHS, Addiction: what is it?](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/). Addiction as not having control over something to the point where it could be harmful to you, and shopping described as something that can become an addiction.
- [Müller, Brand, Claes et al., "Buying-shopping disorder: is there enough evidence to support its inclusion in ICD-11?", CNS Spectrums](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cns-spectrums/article/buyingshopping-disorderis-there-enough-evidence-to-support-its-inclusion-in-icd11/5ABDCCC3ABBDE71F44394A8D8A7F7DD3). The description of urges experienced as irresistible and repeated failed attempts to stop, and its status as not a formal diagnosis.
- [StepChange Debt Charity](https://www.stepchange.org/). Free and impartial debt advice.
