Blowing your birthday money on something dumb is tuition. Just don’t enroll in the same class twice.

Money spent badly buys information, and information has a price like anything else. The first time you waste an amount that hurts, you learn something about yourself that no amount of advice was going to install. The expense is only a loss if you decline the lesson attached to it.

After a bad purchase, work out exactly what happened. What mood, what hour, what sequence of clicks. Name the pattern rather than scolding yourself for it, then put one obstacle in the way of repeating it.