You are green with envy every time that you scroll through your Instagram and TikTok feeds. You get to see the incredible lives of influencers with their perfectly curated outfits, perfectly done makeup and perfectly designed homes. You want just a little piece of that perfection. So, what do you do? You buy the products that influencers are praising!
This envy-inspired shopping habit isn’t a good idea in the long run. If you’re not careful, the lifestyle creep caused by all of these expenses can do some real damage to your finances. Find out how following influencers too closely can get you into financial trouble and what you can do to break your bad shopping habit.
The Financial Trouble of “Influenced” Spending
When you spend blindly to keep up with what influencers are doing, you’re bound to get yourself into a bad financial spot. Your shopping habits could easily land you with some steep balances on your credit cards. You could drain your paycheck far too early and find yourself struggling to pay for essentials like groceries and gas before your next payday arrives. And you might even drain your emergency fund to help you cover non-emergency expenses, like clothes and home decor.
These are all major mistakes that you don’t want to make. A lot of credit card debt will be challenging to pay down and could result in you maxing out your accounts. Draining your paycheck early could lead you to pay bills late and put your account into overdraft. And using your emergency fund for non-emergencies could leave you with nothing when a disaster actually strikes. In that case, you could turn to a website like CreditFresh and see whether you qualify for a personal line of credit there. With a personal line of credit, you can cover an emergency expense quickly, even when you don’t have enough emergency savings available.
It’s important that you don’t use personal lines of credit for non-emergencies, like shopping for the latest item trending online. This is not what the credit tool is meant for.
What Can You Do to Break the Bad Habit?
To make sure that you don’t get into a terrible financial spot, you should break this shopping habit. These are some tips that can help you manage that.
Learn about How Influencing Works
Getting a peek behind the curtain could make it easier to resist products that you see on social media. For instance, you should know that a lot of influencers don’t actually purchase the items that they praise online — a lot of high-profile influencers will get items sent to them by companies for free in order to help with promotion.
Low-level influencers aren’t necessarily spending a fortune on the items they promote, either, although they’re not likely to get them for free from a company’s marketing department. Instead, they may purchase or rent the items to take photos or videos for social media, and then immediately return them after they’ve finished using the items for content.
So, influencers don’t spend money on these items, even when they may have larger income streams than you do. If they aren’t spending money on the items, you shouldn’t either — especially when your budget is tight.
Hop Onto the De-influencing Train
If social media can influence you to overspend, maybe it can influence you to stop spending, too. Social media, particularly TikTok, has recently become filled with de-influencing content, where creators are trying to convince their audiences to stop impulse spending. For instance, TikTok creator Michelle Skidelsky has made excellent videos reminding viewers of things that they do not need to buy as part of the de-influencing trend. Get inspired (or maybe uninspired?) by watching videos like hers. You can find more by searching the #deinfluencing hashtag.
Detox from Social Media
As a last resort, maybe it’s time that you take a little bit of a break from influencers. You can try a social media detox for a short period of time and see whether it makes a difference in your finances. You might find that you have more savings sitting in your bank account and a smaller balance sitting on your credit card throughout your detox.
A detox might have a positive impact on your mental health, too. You might find that without the constant viewership of influencers, you don’t feel as bad about your life. You might not suffer as much from FOMO (fear of missing out) and feel compelled to buy what everyone else is buying. You might not worry as much about your life not meeting a certain aesthetic. In fact, you might be content with how things are going for you, even if they’re not completely perfect.
Stop overspending just because an influencer is encouraging you to do so. You’re better off ignoring them and keeping your wallet firmly closed.