Personal Finance

Impulse spending is stopping you from living your best life. Here’s how to fix it

While 45% of Americans know impulse spending hurts their finances, dopamine-driven purchases are hard to resist. Financial experts share tips to help

ByDeborah Kearns

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Published 16 hours ago|Updated 8 hours ago

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You see it. You want it. You buy it. Let’s face it: impulse spending is hard to resist, especially in a world where social media tells us to have it now (and, in some cases, pay it back later).

The problem with giving in to these urges is that it can derail your budget — and hold you back from living your best financial life, according to a new survey.

Intuit $INTU 2.66%'s 2026 Financial Wellness Survey found that 45% of Americans admit that impulse spending impedes their financial goals. But that’s not stopping them from those purchases. Instead, 38% say that joy drives them to spend, even as 54% of respondents have financial regrets about their choices.

Intuit surveyed 2,000 adults ages 18 to 60 in December to ask questions about the state of their financial health.

"Impulse spending is often less about the item and more about the emotional relief it provides in the moment," said Marsha Barnes, a financial therapist and founder of The Finance Bar, a financial wellness company. "The joy people feel is usually real, but short-lived."

So what drives us to........

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