No matter how you feel about TikTok, you must admit it can get us thinking. #GirlMath (or #GirlMaths if you’re Down Under or Across the Pond) went viral when it spoofed the ways women supposedly play mind games about spending.
Why Did Girl Math Become a Trend?
Girl Math is enough to make a feminist’s blood curdle (to be clear, there’s also Boy Math and even Corporate Math, although those memes don’t focus so much on shopping).
But Girl Math is also, well, funny. And it hit a nerve. The trend likely went viral because it addresses, in the way only social media can, the psychology of spending and how very weird that can be. One thing is clear to anyone, girl or boy, who’s struggled to make a budget and stick with it: When it comes to money, it’s all too easy to play those kinds of mind games.
Read More: Why Do We Make Bad Shopping Decisions?
What Is Girl Math?
It’s easier to explain girl math by taking a look at a couple of examples.
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Returning an item, then thinking you can spend the refund money. It had already come out of your account, so now it seems like new money going in.
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Spending an extra $25 on things you didn’t want, just so you don’t have to pay $5 shipping.
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Thinking that if you pay for something in cash, it doesn’t count as spending because there’s no record of it.
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Doing your Christmas shopping in the summer, then in December feeling like you didn’t spend any money on Christmas gifts.
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Purchasing an item at a discount price, then buying something else with the savings and considering the second purchase free.
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Driving 25 miles out of your way to pay a few cents less for gas.
Read More: Why We Buy Weird Things in Times of Crisis
The Psychology of Spending Money
But it works both ways. If we have all these crazy mind tricks to make ourselves feel better about spending, we can use similar strategies to help control our spending. Johanna Peetz is a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, who studies personal spending and self-regulation strategies.
How to Stop Spending Money
Based on her own research and input from research participants, Peetz makes a few suggestions on how to stop spending money on unnecessary things:
(Credit: fizkes/Shutterstock)
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Make it difficult to make impulse purchases online by deleting your credit card information from websites. If you have to rekey the info each time you want to make a purchase, you’ll have a little time to cool off and make sure you really want to spend that money.
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You can give yourself some cooling-off time for in-person purchases as well,