Notes
This book gives general information. It isn't medical, psychological or financial advice, and it's no substitute for a doctor, therapist or debt adviser who knows your situation.
I've kept sources out of the chapters where I could so they read easily. Here they are by chapter, with the limits I'm aware of. Unless I say otherwise, I read the published summary of each paper and not the full text. I checked each paper for a retraction notice in September 2026 and found none. Where a chapter isn't listed, it rests on my own reasoning. That includes chapters 1, 13 and 17, the three costs in chapter 6, the argument in chapter 10 and the method in chapter 15. The NHS and GOV.UK pages were read in September 2026. They're written for England or the UK, and rules and services differ elsewhere. Most of the research was done in the United States, often with students, and much of it in laboratories with small sums.
Before you start. The debt advice organisations are those listed on the NHS page "Coping with financial worries". The line about extravagant spending is from the NHS page "Symptoms, bipolar disorder", which lists "being impulsive or extravagant such as spending lots of money" among the symptoms of mania.
Chapter 2. Atalay and Meloy, "Retail therapy: a strategic effort to improve mood", Psychology and Marketing 28, 2011, pages 638 to 659. The summary says the positive effect on mood was lasting and doesn't say for how long. Rick, Pereira and Burson, "The benefits of retail therapy: making purchase decisions reduces residual sadness", Journal of Consumer Psychology 24, 2014, pages 373 to 380. Three experiments. The summary says the choices helped "whether they were hypothetical (Experiment 1) or real (Experiment 2)". The list of what else the lift contains is mine.
Chapter 3. Richins, "When wanting is better than having: materialism, transformation expectations, and product-evoked emotions in the purchase process", Journal of Consumer Research 40, 2013, pages 1 to 18. Two cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal. The rise and decline appeared in high-materialism consumers only. Treating a reader on a low evening as a temporary high scorer is my step and hasn't been tested. Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich, "Waiting for Merlot: anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases", Psychological Science 25, 2014, pages 1924 to 1931. Black, "A review of compulsive buying disorder", World Psychiatry 6, 2007, pages 14 to 18. I read the full text. The four phases are the author's own clinical observation.
Chapter 4. Wang, Novemsky and Dhar, "Anticipating adaptation to products", Journal of Consumer Research 36, 2009, pages 149 to 159. Nicolao, Irwin and Goodman, "Happiness for sale: do experiential purchases make consumers happier than material purchases?", Journal of Consumer Research 36, 2009, pages 188 to 198. The third-month question is my application of Wang's finding. The two features of purchases that go on pleasing are my guess.
Chapter 5. Cryder, Lerner, Gross and Dahl, "Misery is not miserly: sad and self-focused individuals spend more", Psychological Science 19, 2008, pages 525 to 530. I read the full text. Thirty-three participants aged 18 to 30, so it's a small study. Garg, Williams and Lerner, "The misery-is-not-miserly effect revisited: replication despite opportunities for compensatory consumption", PLoS One 13, 2018, e0199433. Combining the original and the replication, the authors put the effect at small to medium. Fenton-O'Creevy, Dibb and Furnham, "Antecedents and consequences of chronic impulsive buying: can impulsive buying be understood as dysfunctional self-regulation?", Psychology and Marketing 35, 2018, pages 175 to 188. The sample was 109,472 people in the UK. It's a survey, so it shows what goes with what and can't show cause. The feelings that come before a spree are from a study by Miltenberger and colleagues, as reported in Black 2007. The question "Did I want this yesterday?" is mine and hasn't been tested.
Chapter 6. Dittmar, Bond, Hurst and Kasser, "The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: a meta-analysis", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, 2014, pages 879 to 924. The pooled correlation for the most widely used measure was minus 0.19. Fenton-O'Creevy and colleagues 2018, as above. The figure of a few thousand pounds a year is arithmetic on the example price and isn't a statistic about anyone.
Chapter 7. Prelec and Loewenstein, "The red and the black: mental accounting of savings and debt", Marketing Science 17, 1998, pages 4 to 28. Raghubir and Srivastava, "Monopoly money: the effect of payment coupling and form on spending behavior", Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 14, 2008, pages 213 to 225. Mathur, Acar, Friedman, Lucherini, Mayer, Chetty and Narayanan, "Dark patterns at scale: findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites", Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, 2019, article 81. I read the full text. The crawl covered English-language sites and was run in 2019, so today's figures will differ. What I say about saved cards, one-tap payment and pay-later schemes is my reading of Prelec and Loewenstein. I haven't looked for studies of those schemes. The remarks about email timing and adverts that follow you are common knowledge and I haven't sourced them.
Chapter 8. Thaler, "Mental accounting and consumer choice", Marketing Science 4, 1985, pages 199 to 214. Mathur and colleagues 2019, as above.
Chapter 9. Khan and Dhar, "Licensing effect in consumer choice", Journal of Marketing Research 43, 2006, pages 259 to 266. The three features of a reward that works are mine.
Chapter 10. The cancellation rule is from the GOV.UK page "Accepting returns and giving refunds", in the section on online and distance selling, which is written for businesses. What became of patients' purchases is from a study by Schlosser and colleagues, as reported in Black 2007.
Chapter 11. Richins 2013, as above. Rucker and Galinsky, "Desire to acquire: powerlessness and compensatory consumption", Journal of Consumer Research 35, 2008, pages 257 to 267. Lisjak, Bonezzi, Kim and Rucker, "Perils of compensatory consumption: within-domain compensation undermines subsequent self-regulation", Journal of Consumer Research 41, 2015, pages 1186 to 1203. The claim that ordering the kit makes the real steps less likely is my own and I know of no test of it.
Chapter 12. Whillans, Dunn, Smeets, Bekkers and Norton, "Buying time promotes happiness", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 2017, pages 8523 to 8527. The samples totalled 6,271 people in the United States, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. Van Boven and Gilovich, "To do or to have? That is the question", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, 2003, pages 1193 to 1202. Weingarten and Goodman, "Re-examining the experiential advantage in consumption: a meta-analysis and review", Journal of Consumer Research 47, 2021, pages 855 to 877. Dunn, Aknin and Norton, "Spending money on others promotes happiness", Science 319, 2008, pages 1687 to 1688. The journal published a correction to this paper in 2009, which I haven't read. The points about things used often and things wanted for a long time are mine.
Chapter 14. Rick, Pereira and Burson 2014 and Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich 2014, as above. Nelson and Meyvis, "Interrupted consumption: disrupting adaptation to hedonic experiences", Journal of Marketing Research 45, 2008, pages 654 to 664. Their experiences were things like songs and a massage chair. Carrying the finding over to a jumper put away for six months is my step.
Chapter 15. Plans in "when, then" form are from Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119. The waiting list, the waiting periods and the arrangements haven't been tested together, and what I say to expect is my expectation and not a finding.
Chapter 16. Black 2007, as above. Maráz, Griffiths and Demetrovics, "The prevalence of compulsive buying: a meta-analysis", Addiction 111, 2016, pages 408 to 419. The pooled figure for representative adult samples was 4.9 per cent, from eight estimates covering 10,102 people. Estimates varied a good deal with the questionnaire used. The signs in the list are my plain-language version of Black's description and aren't a diagnostic test. The advice on when to see a GP, on talking therapies and on urgent help is from the NHS pages "Coping with financial worries", "Symptoms, bipolar disorder", "NHS talking therapies" and "Where to get urgent help for mental health".