Social media can affect your credit card balance

Q:

My wife and I moved into our new place a year ago and ever since then, we spend nearly every weekend buying something for the house. At first it made sense to buy new furniture and give some of the bedrooms a fresh coat of paint. But now it seems like she spends all week looking at home decorating sites, watching home reno shows, noticing what our friends have, and checking out Pinterest, to come up with ideas for what we need to do next. And her tastes have gotten more expensive, which is starting to worry me. I already know that this weekend I’ll be shopping for new bathroom faucets with her. Nothing in our house is more than about 18 months old. We’re both proud of the work we’ve put into it, but how can I convince her to be happy with what we have? ~Neil

A:

Owning a home and spending time and money making it look the way we want is an investment many of us enjoy making. For some, however, the lure of something newer, nicer or better is irresistible. The rise of social media has brought this allure to dizzying new heights, even influencing us to buy and spend more than we can reasonably afford.

Whether we like it or not, what we see on social media has a significant impact on the way we live our lives – what we buy, how much we spend, where we go on vacation, who we spend time with, our recreation and entertainment, activities for the kids, how we react to current events — all of it. Seeing our friends’ highlights reels on Instagram makes us wonder if what we have and do is good enough; is our life ’Gram-worthy?

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We are our own worst critic, and when continually comparing ourselves to others it can be easy to feel dissatisfied with what we have, or that we don’t measure up. This is obviously an uncomfortable feeling and one that we want to remedy, which is where the difficulties begin, especially if we have access to credit.

Social media stirs up negative emotions

On the whole, social media doesn’t make us feel better about ourselves, which affects our spending choices. It gives us an unrealistic glimpse into the lives of influencers and celebrities, and lifestyles we just can’t compete with. Friends share the best parts of their lives which, when all strung together in our feeds, creates a fictional narrative we all too eagerly consume. We chase “likes” and upvotes and collect friends and followers as if they are points we need to score. However, we always fall short because there is always something or someone better than us.

Pursuing the life we think we need to live can lead to depression, anxiety and feelings of loneliness, discontent and even isolation. To alleviate the negative feelings, we may end up spending beyond our means, chasing an idealized life we have no hope of attaining or affording.

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Social channels make impulsive buying convenient

Making it easy and convenient to shop is another way social media contributes to our use of credit cards. Baked right into each social channel is the newest kind of targeted marketing consumers are being subjected to. It is advertising, often in the form of promoted posts, that looks like a friend’s post and it makes shopping with one or two clicks easier than ever.

As social media companies, and even Amazon and the loyalty cards you have saved through apps on your phone, collect unprecedented amounts of demographic information about you and your habits, the data allows them to target the ads even more specifically. Then to top it off, you no longer need to go home and think about what you want to buy, do your research online and go back to buy it if you still want it. Most of us have our most powerful computer always close at hand. Our smartphone is all we need and our fingers instantly do the shopping for us no matter where we are.

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Keeping up with all the Joneses everywhere

When we see what others are buying, this subtly motivates us to do the same. What our friends or neighbours share about their purchases promotes a tendency within us to compare ourselves to them, and the thoughts that we should do the same — to fit in, to keep up or to get ahead — aren’t far behind. It can be hard to be happy for a friend’s new car, enjoy a colleague’s exotic honeymoon pictures, or appreciate a sibling’s purchases without a twinge of jealousy. And in the heat of the moment, we don’t always remember that just because someone shares what they bought or did and what works for them, that doesn’t mean we need to buy it right now, or ever. It may not be right for us — and that’s just fine.

There was a time when keeping up with the Joneses was cheaper and almost affordable. That changed with the proliferation of social sharing. Now it’s not just the Joneses in our neighbourhood we want to keep up with, it’s all of the Joneses in every neighbourhood anywhere. Stopping ourselves from becoming overly envious and going on a spending spree takes a lot of self-control; some days we’re up to the challenge, and other days, that’s when we may resort to retail therapy at the expense of our long-term well-being.

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Friending to spending, each platform’s influence on your wallet is different

How you use different social media platforms affects your spending, but not only in the ways you may expect. It boils down to how they make you feel, because feeling terrific means spending to keep that feeling, and feeling down means spending to shake that feeling.

If you use Twitter or Reddit to catch up on current events or newsworthy items, you may be neither overly happy nor overly down. Using Facebook to chat with friends or to reach out to a company for customer service, or Instagram to see what others are up to, can make you feel pretty good about yourself which, in turn, can spur spending. The underlying mindset with Pinterest is feeling positive, even planning more projects than you can reasonably take on, and the reality is that gathering supplies is motivation to spend.

Think about your go-to platforms for information, connection and shopping to determine how they make you feel and influence your spending; your credit card balance depends on it.

What can you do to fend off the influences of social media on your spending?

If you’re worried about how much social media is causing you to spend, you might be tempted to give it up. However, giving up social media is pretty drastic and can cause you to miss out on the good parts too. Rather than give it up entirely, start by evaluating your habits — kind of like

tracking your spending

, track your social media use to identify your habits.

At the same time, take a look at your budget and goals. Determine if, with your current spending habits, debts, obligations and savings, you are on track to meet your goals. If you’re not, set some concrete goals so that you know what to do with your money when temptation strikes, and work towards creating a realistic budget.

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Remove all credit card and bank account information from PayPal, Amazon and all other websites, apps, merchants and platforms so that you can’t use one-click ordering. Make it as cumbersome as possible for yourself to buy online to reduce how often you do it.

Unsubscribe from email marketing campaigns that you really don’t want to see and filter the few subscriptions for your favourite stores into a separate folder. Only look at the emails when you’re shopping for something you need.

You may want to aim to decrease how much time you spend on social media, or on certain platforms. Rather than peeking at your feed for a few minutes as often as you can, plan 15-minute blocks a few times a day into your schedule for social media. Unfollow anyone who isn’t in line with your goals or who isn’t enriching your life in any way. Log out of accounts on your phone if you have to, logging in only during set times. Focus on living in the moment and appreciating real life as it happens.

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The bottom line on how social media influences our spending

It’s easy to blame social media for our spending habits or credit card balance. However, making purchases because we want to keep up, show off or get ahead has been around much longer than the first social accounts we could open. There are many ways social media can enrich our lives. It helps us keep in touch with friends, see photos of family abroad, educate ourselves, build communities around specific interests, disseminate vital information and even provide entertainment. But as Dave Ramsey once said, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”

Social media has its place, and it is up to us to keep it in a place that works for us.

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