For an activity, most of us practice at least a couple of times a week – if not every single day – shopping is incredibly easy to get wrong. Yes, you have the stores’ and the brands’ sales and marketing departments working hard to get every cent they can from you, but that’s no excuse for being bad at shopping.

By changing only a couple of bad shopping habits, you can become a much better shopper, leaving you with more money to buy more things that you need. Here are five bad shopping habits you can start eradicating right now.

Buying Items You Don’t Need Just Because They’re on Sale

Sales are created for two reasons – to help businesses attract your attention, and to help them move stock when it’s time to get in something new. Neither of those reasons has anything to do with you – you’re just the person whose money the stores want.

Buying things on sales can work to your advantage, but not if you let yourself be seduced into buying the things you don’t need just because they’re a couple of dollars cheaper. To work them to your advantage, you need to be aware of the sales calendar, and learn when the things that you need are at their lowest prices. Then, you need to wait for that time.  

Financing Your Shopping with Debt Money

As you get older, you’ll probably realize how accruing debt at a young age can make your life more difficult down the road. The more debt you have to pay off in your thirties, for example, the more you’ll have to wait to achieve important financial milestones, such as become a homeowner.

You should forget your credit cards when you’re buying things, especially if you’re young, and even more so if you’re not too financially-savvy. People who know how to manage their debt might have more leeway in this area, but you need to be good at it to be able to minimize the damage the debt will eventually do to your life.

Shopping Without a Plan

Shopping without a plan can happen in several different ways. You can, for example, go into a store to buy the stuff you’ve run out of at home. Or, you can go shopping online without visiting your trusty cashback website to see where you can get the most cashback.

Being bad at shopping is not a bad habit, but it is something you should change. You want to shop ahead, predicting your needs, and using sales to get those items at a lower cost. You also want to learn about cashback deals and use them to choose where you shop. If you can get a walgreens cashback, why not shop there?

Buying When You Could Rent

Some things you want to own. No matter what you might hear, owning a home has historically been the best way to increase personal wealth, and is in that way better than renting. You should also own the things you use every day – your regular clothes, your computer, probably your car, too.

But for all the luxury items and things you plan to use once in a blue moon and forget them, renting makes much more sense. Unless you plan on buying those things with the hope they’ll increase in value while they’re in your possession, you should always rent them instead of buying. Fancy cars, jewelry, and clothing for special occasions can all be rented.