There I was, in Bed, Bath & Beyond, contemplating using a credit card. Horrors!

I am, first and foremost, a money coach. And as such, I’ve spent ten years working with people on their relationship to money—needless to say; this is a complicated and emotional relationship! And one of the most emotional aspects is in how we spend. (Remember, it doesn’t matter how much you earn if you spend it all!)

This is explored in the hot new field of neuroeconomics—the merging of neuroscience and economics. Wait! This IS really fascinating! Keep reading! This field studies WHY we buy. @amandasteinberg of www.dailyworth.com turned me on to a great article called Your Brain on Shopping, which explores this inner battle between our pleasure and pain centers. (I’ll get back to Bed, Bath & Beyond in a moment.)

It goes like this—as you know, we are all motivated by pain and pleasure. These really are our two base motivations. So when we shop, there is a war between the pleasure of acquisition and the pain of paying for our pleasure. We want the fabulous new couch table in distressed red-painted wood, but we don’t want the pain of paying $459 for it. Ouch! (Can you tell this is a personal example? Surly you all know by now I just bought a house!)

Truly, our brain battles this out at an almost unconscious level. And retailers know this battle very well. For example, they know that if they can stimulate your pleasure centers in general by giving you free food samples, you will move more fully into that part of your brain and seek even more pleasure—pleasure from buying. From this perspective, pleasure can act almost like a drug. You experience pleasure and then you want more pleasure. Rest assured, this is very human.

And we all know one thing: pain sucks. Pain is to be avoided. One of the best ways we’ve come up with to avoid pain is to use a credit card. If you use a credit card, you are delaying the pain of paying. There! Now you can buy the perfect couch table and not have to pay for it right now.

I’ve read countless studies over the years that all document how much more people spend when they use a credit card. In the Your Brain on Shopping article, they also document this.

Check it out:

In a 2001 study, two professors at MIT’s Sloan School of Management held an auction for tickets to a sold-out Celtics game, and divided subjects into those who must pay cash within 24 hours and those who must pay with credit cards. The credit-card buyers were willing to bid on average up to twice as much as the cash buyers, they found.

Wow. TWICE as much. It is sooo true.

Now, I’ve been a money coach for over a decade and I’ve helped countless people get out of credit card debt. But it usually comes down to unhooking them from using credit cards in general. (Once you have no credit card debt, it is possible to use credit cards wisely, but for many people, this is not possible even then. Don’t kid yourself.)

I don’t like to use credit cards. I simply pay as I go. I have a lovely spending plan that has guided me to greater and greater heights in my life—increasing my earnings and making many things possible. I truly loath credit card debt.

And yet…. I just bought this house. I am hemorrhaging money. Was it all planned? Yes. Well, okay, there were some unplanned things that happened. I didn’t anticipate the kitchen plumbing project, for one thing. And all the new light fixtures.

And curtains. I have to buy curtains for every single freaking window in this house. Good curtains, since I can’t upgrade my windows until next year. So I’ve been buying curtains, trying them out for color, and returning them, for nearly a month—looking for the perfect curtains. And I put these purchases…. on a credit card. My rationale was that I was buying and returning them constantly.

On Saturday I was at Bed, Bath & Beyond, looking at their curtains. And I realized with a jolt that I had fallen into a typical problem. Their curtains were much cheaper than what I had been purchasing at another store. Why hadn’t I looked around more? Why had I simply bought curtains at this other store? Why? Because I put them on a credit card. I swear—if I had put those other curtains on my debit card, I would have thought deeper about how much their curtains cost….

And while we’re on the subject of Bed, Bath and Beyond, let me share this—In this article on brain and shopping, George Loewenstein, (professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University) shares several tips. One is to keep moving and not buy too much in one store. Why? Because you may experience what he calls “decreasing sensitivity to losses.” He says “Especially if you’ve spent a large amount, say $100, at a store, you don’t want to start buying a bunch of small stuff, because it will start feeling free. If you go to another store, it won’t feel free.”

So there I was, at Bed, Bath & Beyond, cruising the aisles. (Danger, Will Robinson!) I had just put in my cart a $100 electric hand broom—think of a dust buster with a large handle so you can sweep your floor without using a broom and a dustpan. Oh, I wanted it! A hundred bucks. Then I looked down at my cart and saw three small baskets, a set of hooks, a curtain tie back, and the perfect spice rack. Hmmm. They seemed like such small purchases next to the dust buster. And I really wanted that dust buster!

For a moment, a small part of my brain said the word “credit card”. Amazing! Me! I don’t even like the damn things! Well, except I’ve had that curtain experiment going on…. So I sat there and calculated the cost, knowing it would come out of my bank account almost as soon as I went through their checkout line. Oh the pleasure of those goodies. Oh the pain of paying for them.

The baskets went back, and the cute closet hooks.

I left the store and immediately bought a huge yummy latte—my pleasure center demanded it.

The lesson in all of this? Yes, we really do spend more when we use our credit cards, so don’t use them. I know people go on and on about free airline miles and better security with a credit card, but study after study tells me that they are evil. (And only 20% of Americans use their credit cards and pay them off in full each month. So if you are in that 20%, good for you. But please realize that you are in a minority of the population. Don’t advocate this practice in general. It’s very dangerous for most people.)

And spending is emotional. Don’t pretend it isn’t. The best way to get in touch with your pleasure and your pain is to pay as you go and use your debit card.

(I returned the expensive curtains and put them back on that credit card. A zero balance is a beautiful thing.)