the high-achieving girl's Black Friday problem
read this before checking out | fhg #68
Happy Sunday financial hotties,
This year we’re absolutely avoiding the “make a wish-list” advice that normally does the rounds for Black Friday. I’m cutting to the chase: you’re smart, you have money, and you know how to spend it well.
But sometimes, these things don’t matter. The financially literate, logical voice in our head gets overridden. Our environments never stay consistent. And most importantly, our ambition can cloud our judgement.
This issue is a breakdown of how your surroundings influence your spending without you realising, and how you can use that to your advantage this week.
The Black Friday system for smart, ambitious women
Black Friday really crept up on me this year, and it wasn’t necessarily because being in Mexico helped me detach from my spending habits (shock). In fact, my daily spend is more than usual—but more on this in future issues.
Black Friday crept up on me because my daily environment has changed so much that my usual spending signals and triggers just… don’t exist anymore.
I have less time to check my emails, less exposure to ads, and way more of my life is happening offline.
And something about this made a lightbulb go off in my head this week, and personally I think all ambitious women (who tend to lean on discipline and systems building) need to hear it:
Discipline isn’t the biggest driver of financial behaviour, it’s actually your environment.
So we need a system for our environment that incorporates how we’re influenced and where our attention goes.
Your environment works faster than your actual brain
One of the most famous ideas from behavioural science is the choice architecture concept from Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge.
It says your surroundings shape your decisions long before you actually, consciously decide anything. Kinda annoying when you’ve spent an entire decade learning how to build discipline, but let’s work with it.
If your inbox is loud, your impulses will be louder. And if your environment is quiet, your spending becomes intentional by default.
That’s what I noticed this week. I wasn’t simply more disciplined with my spending, but my environment was unintentionally designed for me to not be shopping sales.
If you’re ambitious, you’re actually more responsive to being influenced
High-achieving women are highly responsive to cues because of two things:
Goal orientation: your brain is always scanning for tools to help you optimise.
Social comparison sensitivity: backed by social comparison theory, smart driven women compare upwards far more often.
This means when Black Friday messaging taps into:
identity
ambition
self-improvement
productivity
aesthetics
Then your brain is primed to see opportunity. Now this doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your spending cues, it’s just an intelligent pattern I hope you can now notice more.
However, it becomes a problem when the environment overrides your intention.
Spending changes when your attention changes
Scarcity research shows that when your cognitive load increases, impulsive decisions increase too.
That means that when you’re stressed, rapidly switching context, cluttering your life with digital noise or generally being overstimulated, you’re more likely to make an impulsive decision.
There’s a silver lining to this though: the opposite is also true.
You’ll often spend less when your life is full, you’re not context switching, or you’re not stressed.
You’re not spending less because you’re “being good”, but instead because you don’t have spare cognitive space to literally want everything.
Black Friday is a reflective magnet: here’s what to do about it
Remember, the sales this week aren’t inherently bad. They will reflect and magnify whatever identity season you’re in right now.
So the real task for you isn’t to restrict your spending, or organise your wants and needs into lists. It’s to remember that spending only becomes dysfunctional when you’re leading with emotion instead of identity.
Remove the noise: review your list. If it’s not already on your list, it’s not a Black Friday contender.
Reduce the time buffer: research shows shorter buffers reduce impulsive decisions. Don’t sleep on it or give yourself 24 hours, give yourself just 10 minutes at checkout.
Filter everything through your identity season: ask yourself “will this help the version of myself I will be in January?”
Only buy what removes friction from your life: having ease is a financial strategy, we know that well as financial hotties. Audit pre-existing friction in your daily life and use Black Friday as a strategy.
Check your stress levels. Touch some grass. Make sure you’re sleeping well. Then make a spending decision, so that you can part with your hard-earned money with a clear mind.
Which brings us onto what exactly to part with your money for…
What to buy this week (and what to leave alone)
We want to spend without regret, so let’s focus on three categories:
1. Tools that make your life easier
Things that save time, reduce stress, or improve routines. I include apps and software here, where I often lock in the biggest savings. See below for my personal yearly favourites.
2. Staples for your personal uniform
Items you will wear 50+ times. If it’s a 1 event item or even a 5 event item, leave it in the basket.
Honourable mention: items that facilitate you needing less. Think high quality, natural-fibre items. Things that stand the test of time, keep you warm and require less up-keep.
3. Things that raise your daily baseline
Better sheets, better socks, a better chair. Upgrades that make your everyday life feel calmer and more functional.
Invest in anything that separates you from the ground.
My ideal Black Friday list
I’m a sucker for software on Black Friday, and it’s where I’ve made the most savings and reduced friction in my life. Here are my top buys:
Clean My Mac App - I use this regularly as a creator and writer it’s essential for digital decluttering.
Strong App - I bought the lifetime subscription a few years ago and my cost per workout must be less than 50p. I love this for tracking strength workouts, working out my max weights, having preset routines, everything!
Adobe Creative Cloud - editing photos, videos and a lot of creative work requires good software. Premiere Pro is new for me but so flexible.
Manta Sleep eyemask - I have been using this for years, so much so that my boyfriend stole mine. A brand partner I’m genuinely excited about as sleep is essential as a financial hot girl. Once the Black Friday sale is over, use DEV10!
COS Chunky Cashmere Sweater - COS don’t do Black Friday specific sales, but when they do, I always have their cashmere on my list.
Skims Soft Smoothing T-Shirt - I am a walking, talking ad for this piece. The Skims sale on anything soft smoothing is not to be missed.
Walking Pad (Amazon) - my walking pad was a daily routine essential when at home. I got mine in a black friday sale a few years ago, and still paid double what this one is retailing for.