All this time I thought I was spending too much because Amazon was so convenient and for some reason I have a love for Costco....but now I have my last name to blame.

Actually, BOTH the convenience AND your name are likely factors that affect your spending.

What our neighbors buy affects what we buy, as does our names, the weather, and the type of floor a store has.

tl;dr: There are MANY things that influence our spending decisions.

• Music manipulates us into spending in flower shops and restaurants.

• Which products are next to each other on the shelf influences what we buy. In fact, one product can catch “cooties” from another.

• Attractive salespeople mess with our heads too, especially if they touch the products. Truth is, we’re more satisfied after buying from good-looking people.

• Stores use lots of tricks to get us to spend. Limits on how many items we can purchase make us purchase more. So does stocking fewer items.

• The word sale makes us less likely to comparison shop and yellow tags fool us into thinking we’re getting a discount even when we’re not.

Luckily there are fast, easy tricks to avoid buying too much and breaking a budget.

More on the subject of things that drive us to consume:

http://pandawhale.com/post/4292/psychological-tricks-consumer-shopping-behaviors-that-influence-selling-through-psychology