Write two lines a day for fourteen days. The time you wanted to buy something, and what had happened in the hour before. Do not analyse as you go. Read the whole thing at the end, and you will almost certainly find two repeating windows and one repeating feeling, which is more useful than any budget you could write today.
Why the total tells you nothing
You already know roughly what you spend. Knowing it has not changed anything, and it will not, because a monthly total is a summary of fourteen separate moments and it contains no information about any of them.
What you need is the moment. Not "I spend too much on clothes" but "half past ten on a Sunday, after a phone call with my mother, feeling flat". The second one is addressable. You can change what happens at half past ten on a Sunday.
Triggers are also considerably narrower than people expect. Almost nobody is buying compulsively all day. Most people have two windows and a scatter of one-offs, and the rest of the week is genuinely fine.
The log
Fourteen days. Two lines. Keep it in the notes app or on the back of an envelope.
| Write down | Example | |---|---| | **Time** | Tuesday, 22:40 | | **What just happened** | Finished work late, house quiet, checked email | | **What you felt, in one word** | Flat | | **Whether you bought** | Yes, £38 |
Four fields, thirty seconds. Log the near misses too, the ones where you wanted to and did not, because they carry exactly the same information about the trigger and there are usually more of them.
Two rules. Do not skip the small ones, because the pattern lives in the small ones. And do not write commentary. "Should not have" is not data.
What you are looking for on day fifteen
Read all fourteen days in one sitting, with a pen, and look for four things.
**The hour.** There is nearly always a window, and it is nearly always unobserved and unstructured. Late evening after everybody has gone to bed is the most common by a wide margin. Second most common is the commute.
**The place.** In bed with the phone. On the sofa with the television on. At a desk during a dull afternoon. Physical location predicts more than people expect, which is why moving where the phone charges can change a whole week.
**The trigger event.** A row. A shift ending. Wages landing. An email with a discount in it. Being alone after being with people all day. A sale notification is a trigger even though it looks like a coincidence.
**The feeling.** This is the column that pays and the one people leave vague. Push for one word. Bored, wired, ashamed, lonely, angry, celebratory.
The four feelings and what each one needs
The mistake is to treat all of these as the same problem and apply a stricter rule to them.
**Bored.** The commonest. Boredom does not respond to insight or to willpower, it responds to occupation. If half your rows say bored, the answer is something with a start time in that window, not a better blocker.
**Wired or stressed.** Buying changes how you feel quickly and the cost lands later, once the feeling has already passed. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the parcel so often stays unopened in the hall. The relief was in the buying. What competes with it is anything physical and immediate: a walk, a shower, leaving the room.
**Lonely.** The hardest, because it is the one where friction alone is cruel. If the rows say lonely, part of the plan has to be a person on a Tuesday rather than a stricter setting on your phone.
**Celebrating.** Almost nobody logs this as a risk at the time and it accounts for a surprising share of the biggest purchases. A good day is a trigger.
Turn the map into three changes
Take the two most frequent rows and make one physical change for each. Not a resolution. A change to the conditions.
- **A change to the hour.** Something with a start time inside the window, or the phone charging in the kitchen from ten o'clock.
- **A change to the route to the payment.** Whatever your log says you use most: the app deleted with the account kept, the saved card removed from that specific site, the notifications from that shop turned off. [Every place a card hides is listed here](/guides/spending/putting-friction-between-you-and-checkout).
- **A change that answers the feeling.** A person, a walk, a class, a job with your hands. Whatever your fourth column actually says.
What the log will not tell you
It will not give you a diagnosis, and it is not trying to. Compulsive buying is not a formal diagnosis anywhere: the researchers arguing for its inclusion note that neither DSM-5 nor ICD-11 lists it as a mental health disorder. What the log gives you is the specific behaviour in your own week, which is the thing you can actually change.
It will also not tell you whether the spending is a problem in the first place. That is a different set of questions, about hiding, harm and failed attempts to stop, and [they are here](/guides/spending/is-my-spending-a-problem).
Keep it visible afterwards
A map in a drawer is a pleasant afternoon and nothing else. Put the windows somewhere you will meet them: a calendar reminder at the start of the hour, a note on the fridge, a text to somebody at the time you usually buy.
Some people find it easier to keep the log, 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.
If the money underneath all this is the real problem, that is a separate and free conversation. StepChange, 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. If it is heavier than money, Samaritans is 116 123, any hour.
Common questions
**Why do I shop when I am stressed?** Because buying shifts how you feel almost immediately and the cost arrives much later, after the feeling has passed. Stress is the state most likely to make that trade look necessary. It is also why the parcel often goes unopened, since the relief was delivered at checkout.
**Why do I online shop late at night?** Late evening is unobserved, unstructured and tired, which is the exact combination compulsive buying needs. It is the most commonly reported window, and the cheapest single fix is to charge the phone in a different room.
**How long should I keep the log?** A fortnight is enough to see a pattern and short enough to actually finish. Log the times you wanted to buy and did not, as well as the purchases, because the near misses carry the same information.
**What if there is no pattern?** Look again at the fourth column rather than the first. Some people have no time pattern at all and a very clear feeling pattern, which is harder to spot because it does not sit on a clock. If it still looks random after a fortnight, keep going for another week and log the near misses more carefully.
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.
- [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). That neither DSM-5 nor ICD-11 includes it as a formal disorder, and the described pattern of preoccupation and irresistible urges.
- [SMART Recovery UK](https://smartrecovery.org.uk/). Free meetings grounded in cognitive behavioural therapy, covering problem behaviours as well as substances.
