How to prevent buying addiction

This blog is mostly meant for myself. It is about restraint. 

With whisky it is good to prevent addictive behaviour. Either in drinking or in buying. 

How do I manage both? 

I prevent becoming an alcoholic by not allowing myself a dram during weekdays. It's a deal I made with myself. In the weekend I treat myself to one dram per evening. I do see the fryday nights as part of my weekend. The drams are in a glencairn tasting glass, so about 30 millilitres. 

That is it! Very simple preventive measures. Just make a deal with yourself. 

Would having 2 drams a day result in alcoholism? I'm sure it would for someone, but not for everyone. I made this choice and plan to live by it.  

I try to prevent becoming a buying addict. This is proving to be more difficult than I thought. 

As a whisky enthusiast I follow blogs, brows websites, read books, watch reviews, visit shops, tastings and festivals. All this information can be taken in at the pace you are able to take it in. (Duh! Lol) What I mean by that is this. If you are unaware of Lagavulin having a 200 year anniversary then you will probably not know about the 8 year old "limited" edition. You can't buy something you are unaware off. 

So awareness due to knowledge leads to possible purchases. Since most whisky retailers are perfectly aware of marketing strategies customers will probably follow accordingly. The tricks is to not fall for marketing but to make buying choices based on personal motivation. This however is very difficult since everyone can be influenced subconsciously buy all the information you take in, be it advertising or anything else.

I myself like to (probability not true) consider myself a prosumer. Which means I try to look past/around marketing. (Good luck with that!) 

So how do I limit my spending? Fact is, at the moment, I don't. 

How could I limit my spending?

- determine a monthly budget, 

- determine what is the goal I want to achieve with buying whisky. Do I want to collect everything? Do I want to expand my palette and buy accordingly? Do I want to hunt for collectables? Depending on the answer I can set limits to what I want to buy. The trick is actually limiting yourself to the budget set out and choices made! If I choose to buy only this, then don't buy something else, even if it's on discount 

- determine if I buy to enjoy drinking or buy to invest. I decided I do the first, but some bottles are left closed for future options ;) 

- make a conscious choice each time you buy if you can afford it or other need to spend the money on food for your kids! Or a new refrigerator! Anything more needed than luxury goods really.