I made an impulse buy this morning. And I’ve bucked all the trends by doing so. I’ll explain.

  1. According to research, impulse buys are most likely to happen in large towns and cities, and not in rural areas. I made mine at quiet Boussac’s Thursday market.

  2. Young people are the biggest impulse buyers. Up to 90% of under 25s impulse buy, whereas it’s only 37% of 50 year olds. I’m not quite 50 yet, so there was, let’s say, only around a 38% chance that I would make an achat d’impulsion today. But I did.

  3. Men are more likely to impulse buy than women. It’s true. And they spend more. In the UK men spend £25 on impulse buys, against £19 by women. This is a scary amount in both cases and adds up to around £70,000 over an adult’s lifetime. Wow! Well, I’m not a guy, but I also didn’t spend £19. I’m still not fitting the profile.

  4. The most popular impulse buys are clothes, DVDs, books, booze and magazines. My purchase didn’t fall into that category.

So – what was my impulse buy? Two cou-nu chickens, about 5 weeks old! They cost €2.80 each.

Arriving home

It’s Chris’s fault. He needed to go to the hardware shop for some more plumbing bits and pieces. He persuaded me to come along for the ride, since I’m a bit down in the dumps at the mo. So I did. And after we’d been to Boussac Brico, we decided to stroll round the market. This ended up with us going to the poultry stall to order our turkeys (5 whites, 2 bronzes and 2 blacks this year), and that’s when I made my impulse chicken buy.

Now I unexpectedly had my young chickens, I needed food for them. I only have blé at home. So we had to go to Gamm Vert for that. That’s a garden centre, so that meant we also ended up buying more seeds, and also 15 lettuces and 12 beetroot seedlings to inspire our struggling ones at home. See what a slippery slope this impulse buying lark is?

Still, that should satisfy my coup de tête retail therapy urges for a while. Chris can breathe easily again!

Settling in