How to trick your brain into spending less

Can't figure why your brain is conned to spend, spend, spend -- specially during the festive season?

Well, the possibility is that, while shopping the mind gets 'out of control' and it becomes hard to restrain retail urges -- but if you want to take control of the buying instincts -- then here are few tips.

The tips have been provided by John Naish, the author of Enough: Breaking Free From The World Of More, published by Hodder & Stoughton.

According to TimesOnline, a person can kid his or her instinct into spending less. Here's how:

1. Give yourself -- and your purse -- a break

Pausing briefly between choosing something and taking it to the check-out can dramatically boost the chance of the cash staying in your purse, says a study to be published in December's Journal of Consumer Research.

2. Don't even touch your cards

Credit cards might not only anaesthetise retail pain, they may create a physical craving to get the dopamine high from spending, says Professor Drazen Prelec, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

3. Keep brands out of your brain

Designer brands have proved unprecedentedly effective at persuading you to spend more money on "special" goods that are actually only of average quality.

Brands are painstakingly developed to encourage people to identify with them, to believe that their favourite labels have exactly the same human values as they do. So stay miles away from them.

4. Don't shop with friends

People spend more money to maintain our self-image in front of others.

5. Staying calm costs less

People are more liable to spree when financially squeezed: under stress they can feel driven to hoard, says a study of students in Behavioural Research Therapy.