You're Not Overspending Because You're Broke

You just dropped forty dollars on a DoorDash order at 11pm on a Tuesday. There was food in the fridge. You know rent hits in four days. You did it anyway. That's not a math problem. That's a control problem wearing a receipt.

Everyone treats overspending like an income issue. Make more money, the theory goes, and you'll stop doing it. Except the person who got a raise last month is doing this exact same thing this week, and the person who's genuinely broke and the person who's genuinely comfortable are both doing it for the same reason. The receipt looks different. The reason underneath it doesn't.

Ash Bala, who wrote Main Character Money, makes the case that overspending correlates with someone's sense of control rather than their income level, meaning the actual trigger isn't "I don't have enough money," it's "I don't feel like I have enough say over my own day." That lines up with what's usually happening right before people blow money on stuff they don't need: a bad meeting, a canceled plan, a day where nothing went the way they wanted. The purchase was never really about the item. It's the one decision in a day full of decisions that got made for you.

That's also why "just budget better" keeps failing for people who are otherwise good with numbers. A budget assumes the problem is arithmetic. But the actual problem showed up hours earlier, in the moment something reminded you how little control you have over your job, your schedule, your actual life. The card swipe is just the part you can see on a statement.

The fix isn't more restriction. Restriction is just another thing being decided for you, which is the exact feeling that started this in the first place. The fix is catching the moment before the purchase and asking what just happened, what you're actually trying to get back. Name it, and the forty-dollar order at 11pm starts looking like exactly what it is. Not a snack. A vote for feeling like you're still in charge of something.