The other day I was kind of surprised as I saw this person buy a lot of junk food where you could have sworn that he was buying it for like a party of some sort. Of course I was curious about it as he doesn’t usually buy thews kinds of stuff. Interestingly enough, the answer simply came down to he bought it because it was a good deal. Indeed it was a good deal as it seemed like he got what would normally cost about a $1.50 item reduced to about 60 cents.
It makes me think of all the other things that we buy in a similar way simply because it is a lot cheaper than what we normally see it priced for. For example, there could be movies that we normally wouldn’t be interested in or clothes that we don’t need where we justify the purchase simply because it seems cheap. I guess it’s a test of self control and it definitely challenges your ability to really think ahead.
When the item is super cheap though you often get into this debate on how you will either never see the item at that price again or that it’s no real loss since it isn’t much money. I know one funny way that works for people is if they use things like online banking all you need to do is get them to stare at their bank account for a bit. Just the sheer notion of that number dropping down really gets people to think about the future. For myself, thinking about the future is usually the key to discourage you from making purchases that you don’t need.