Maddie Baker, 27, will be the first to admit she was an impulsive spender when she started teaching kindergarteners six years ago.
She bought coffee at least once a day, frequently shopped for new clothes and spent lavishly on vacations she says she “probably had no business going on.”
“Any day that I had a hard day at teaching, I would immediately go from my job to a store,” the now first-grade teacher tells CNBC Make It. “The way I was coping with hard days was by spending money.”
Baker isn’t alone. Almost half of American consumers say they make purchases to boost their mood, according to LendingTree survey data released in July. Emotional spending isn’t always bad, either. It can provide temporary comfort or a needed mood boost. However, it can also lead to financial strain.
Baker says her impulsive spending got so out of hand, she found herself in “horrible cycles” of living paycheck to paycheck to avoid going into credit card debt. Nationally, almost three-quarters of emotional shoppers admit they’ve spent more than they intended, and 44% say it’s negatively impacted their financial well-being, LendingTree found.
It took Baker three years to get her spending under control, she says. Today, she’s very intentional with how she spends her money and has even developed new hobbies from habits she’s built to save money.
“I remember just waking up every single day, and the stress of finances was just really getting me down,” says Baker, who was making around $50,000 a year at the time. “It became so stressful.”
Nearly Baker’s entire paycheck would go directly toward paying off her credit card. Because she was paid once a month, that often left her with little to live on — forcing her to rely on the card for new expenses and trapping her in a constant cycle of borrowing from herself.
She tried everything to earn extra cash. She tutored kids during her summer breaks, tried selling her clothes and donating her plasma, but none of it seemed to sustain her lifestyle, she says.
Baker got her spending under control three years into teaching through a tax refund that allowed her to pay off her credit card bill without using her paycheck. Now, she keeps enough in her checking account to pay her credit card bill every month without having to rely on an incoming paycheck.
“It took a total restart and being tired of the cycle I was in, in order to do something about it,” she says.
Young adults are particularly susceptible to overspending when they’re online or bombarded with bad news, Ylva Baeckström, a senior lecturer in finance at King’s Business School, said in 2024. Overwhelming feelings can lead to unhealthy spending habits as a way to cope or find relief, Baeckström said.
To avoid overspending, “one of the biggest things you can do is take a beat,” Keith Barron, a personal finance expert and former head of marketing at Jenius Bank, said in 2024.
Rather than heading straight to checkout when shopping online, try adding the item to a wish list and waiting a day or two. This brief delay can help you decide whether you genuinely want or need the item, Barron said.
From saving money to finding new hobbies
Today, Baker is working toward building an emergency fund and saving for a house, and says she’s way more intentional about what she decides to spend money on.
On top of learning how to spend less impulsively, she says she’s found alternatives to save money and a side hustle creating videos on TikTok to bring in more income. Her silver lining: Many of the activities that started as a way to save have become hobbies as well.
She enjoys painting her own nails, making lattes at home and meal prepping to avoid eating out. On TikTok, she earns up to $2,000 a month from sharing videos about her life as a teacher.
“All of these things happened because I had the mindset of, ‘I need to save more money, and I need to spend less money,'” she says.
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