What should you actually track before you buy something?
Seven things worth writing down before you pay. Tick them off below and the page tells you whether this is a decision or just a good evening for shopping.
Most pre-purchase checklists ask whether the shop is safe. This one asks whether the purchase makes sense.
Both matter. Only one of them explains the thing sitting unused in your cupboard.
Search for what to check before you buy something and you mostly get scam advice. Is the shop real, is the padlock there, is the deal too good. That advice is worth following, and fake shops do genuinely cost people money. It just answers a different question from the one most of us get wrong. Plenty of purchases we regret came from real shops and arrived on time. They were bought by a tired person at eleven at night, and a week later you cannot reconstruct a single thing you were thinking. So here is a second list, for after the shop checks out: seven things about the purchase and about you, written down while you still know them. Tick what you actually have below. Three of the seven do most of the work, and the page will show you which ones you skipped.
Your pre-purchase check
Nothing is sent anywhere. It is kept in this browser so you can come back.This is how complete your note is, not a score for the purchase. The three heavy items count double, and they are marked below.
Your check as plain text. Copy it, keep it with the thing, and read it again in a week.
Why the lists you find are about a different problem
The advice at the top of the search results is genuinely good advice about fraud. The FTC has a page on online shopping and one on what to know before you buy. The Better Business Bureau has its six things to look for. They are about whether the shop is real and whether your money is safe.
That is a real risk, and worth checking first. It is just not the only one. The other one is that the shop was perfectly real, the delivery arrived on time, and you now own something you cannot picture yourself using. A padlock icon does not help with that part.
The scam-focused lists, for reference: FTC on online shopping, FTC on what to know before you buy, BBB, six things to look for.
The seven, and why each one is on the list
1. What it costs today, all in
Not to be clever about it. Just so that in a week you can tell whether anything moved. Write the real total, not the label: delivery, fitting, the subscription it needs to be useful, the refills it eats. A $60 thing with $12 delivery and a $5 monthly app is not a $60 thing.
2. The price you would pay without thinking
The heaviest item on the list. Pick the number where this is an easy yes, and pick it now, while nothing is on offer. A limit chosen before the sale is much less likely to be nudged by the discount. If you choose your limit during the sale, you will probably just accept the price the shop is already showing you.
3. How long you have to send it back
Thirty days, fourteen days, or none because it is a final sale. This one fact decides how much the rest of the list matters. A generous return window turns a wrong call into a small annoyance. No returns makes it permanent. Worth keeping three things apart while you are there: a return means you changed your mind and get your money back, a warranty means it broke and gets repaired or replaced, and a final sale means neither. Shops often display all three near each other, which is not an accident.
4. The date you decided you wanted it
The second heavy item, and the one people find strangest. It is the simplest way to tell something you have wanted for two months from something you have wanted for two minutes. In the moment, a new impulse feels just as strong as a want you have carried for months.
5. What you would buy instead
The third heavy item. Name the alternative, including the alternative of the thing you already own. If nothing else comes to mind, you are not choosing this, you are just looking at it.
6. What it is actually for
One sentence, and the sentence has to contain a real situation. Not for hiking. For the trip in October, in the rain, when the old one leaked.
7. How it will look on next month’s statement
The cheap one that catches a surprising amount. Picture the line on your statement in four weeks, next to everything else you will have spent. Comfortable? Fine. Slightly sick? That is information, and it arrived before the money left. This one is a gut check rather than a fact, so it is the easiest of the seven to skip, and skipping it only costs you one point.
Three of the seven do most of the work
If you only ever write down three of these, make it the price you would pay, the date you decided, and the alternative. Together they show whether the price was fair, whether the wanting lasted, and whether you actually compared anything. That is why they count double in the checklist. The weighting is ours, it is a judgement rather than a finding, and the exact arithmetic is at the bottom of the page so you can disagree with it precisely.
One filled-in check, and what happened a week later
Here is the whole thing on one purchase, so you can see what a finished note looks like. A pair of running shoes, spotted on a Tuesday night.
- What it costs today, all in. $150, plus $8 delivery. So $158.
- The price I would pay without thinking. $120. Picked before looking at any offers.
- How long to send it back. 30 days, free returns, as long as they have not been worn outside.
- The date I decided. Tonight. Which is the honest answer, and it is worth writing down as tonight rather than dressing it up.
- What I would buy instead. Nothing. I already own trainers that are fine for the two runs a week I actually do.
- What it is for. The 10k in October, which I have not signed up for.
- Next month’s statement. $158 next to the dentist bill. A bit much.
Six of seven filled in, so the note is nearly complete. The verdict still says wait, for two reasons that have nothing to do with how much was written: today’s price is above the number I chose, and the date I decided was tonight.
A week later. Reading it back, the sentence about the 10k is the one that gives it away, because I still have not signed up. The alternative line says I already own working shoes. The shoes went back on the list with a watch set at $120, and the note stayed attached to them. That is the entire method. It is not clever, it just makes the following Tuesday cheaper.
The discount is real. That does not make it the low price.
Which? tracked 175 Black Friday deals across eight UK retailers from May 2024 to May 2025. Of those 175, 83% cost the same or less at some point outside the sale window, and none of them hit their lowest price of the year on the day. A sale tells you the price moved. Your own number tells you whether it moved far enough.
Source: Which?, price analysis of 175 products across eight retailers, May 2024 to May 2025, published 25 November 2025. which.co.uk
What to do with it a week later
The list is not the point. Coming back to it is the point, and a week is about right: long enough that the evening has worn off, short enough that you have not lost the link.
- Read your own sentence about what it is for. If it still describes a real situation, that is the strongest signal on the list. If it now reads like something you wrote to convince yourself, you have your answer.
- Check today’s price against your number. Not against the number on the tag last week. Against the one you chose.
- Look at the date you decided. A week ago is a week of wanting. Last night is not a decision yet, it is an evening.
- If you cannot remember the alternative you wrote down, that is information too. It means the choice was never really between two things.
Tell me the thing and the price that would make it an easy yes. In a week I can bring the whole note back, in your own words, including the sentence about what it was for.
When to skip all of this
A checklist that applies to everything applies to nothing, so here is where this one does not belong.
- Small and often. Nobody is filling in seven fields for socks. Below whatever counts as small money for you, the checklist costs more than the mistake.
- Something broke. A dead washing machine is not a decision, it is a Tuesday. Buy the replacement.
- The last one in your size. Rare, second-hand or one-off items do not come back on a schedule. Waiting is not a strategy when there is nothing to wait for.
- A present. The person and the occasion have already answered most of the seven questions for you.
Where we come into it
The awkward part of any checklist is that it lives somewhere. On paper it goes missing. In a note app it becomes one of forty notes called Untitled.
In dEssence a filled-in check is just a saved item: the link or the screenshot, plus your own notes about the price you would pay, the date and what it is for. A week later you ask Tracy about it in the words you would actually say out loud, and the note comes back with the thing. If the item is worth watching, you switch on a price or stock watch for it yourself, because saving something does not start watching it. Free and Pro both exist, and the difference is how much you can keep and watch at once.
Fair questions about all this
Why a week?
No study here says seven days is the magic number, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A week is simply long enough for the evening to wear off and short enough that you still have the link. If two days is what you have, use two days. The waiting is not the point. Reading your own note afterwards is the point.
What about a deal that ends tonight?
Then ask what the deadline is doing to you. If the price is already at or below the number you would have picked anyway, buy it, and you can do that in ninety seconds with this list. If you have no number yet, the countdown is choosing for you.
Is this worth doing for a $20 purchase?
Probably not. Use it where a mistake would actually annoy you: for some people that is $50, for others $500. Anything below your own line, just buy the thing.
Where is this going to live, physically?
Worth asking for anything large. A bread maker needs a cupboard, a bike needs somewhere it will not get stolen, an exercise machine needs a room you are willing to lose. If the honest answer is “I will find somewhere”, add that to what it is for.
Writing it down is not a delay tactic. It is the only way to tell wanting from deciding.
Seven lines take about ninety seconds. The thing you buy after those ninety seconds is a different purchase, even when you buy exactly the same thing.
How the completeness number and the verdict work
The arithmetic. Seven items, ten points in total. The price you would pay, the date you decided and the alternative are worth two points each, because we think they carry the decision. The other four are worth one each. The percentage is simply your points out of ten, so it measures how much of the note you filled in and nothing more. Ticking an item means you actually know it, so the honest way to use this is to leave things unticked.
- 70% or more, and no price problem: the verdict says go ahead. You know what it costs, what you would pay, when you decided and what you would buy instead.
- 40% to 69%: wait a week. Not a no. It means you have not written down enough to review this properly in seven days.
- Under 40%: the verdict says this is a mood rather than a purchase, because almost nothing about the decision exists outside this moment.
- The override. If you filled in both prices and today’s price is above the number you would pay, the verdict is wait no matter how much else is ticked. You already told yourself what it was worth.
- The other override. Missing both the date and the alternative caps the verdict at wait a week even above 70%, because those two are what a week actually tests.
The weights are ours, and they are a judgement. We think these questions are the ones that matter, but no study here shows that seven questions or a seven-day wait reduce regret. Treat the number as how complete your note is, not as a score for the purchase. Nothing here is financial advice.
Where your answers go. Nowhere. They are kept in this browser so the page remembers them when you come back, and the clear button deletes them. If your browser blocks storage, the checklist still works, it just forgets.
Sources on this page: Which? Black Friday price tracking, FTC, BBB.