Overspending Online? Use This Chrome App to Resist Impulse Buys

Even if you’re not a compulsive shopper, when the holiday season comes around, the temptation to buy yourself as many gifts as you buy others can sometimes be too much to resist. If you're having trouble sticking to your holiday budget, Finder.com's Icebox is a handy solution. The Chrome extension is designed to help you say no to impulse purchases (even the best deals!), as PSFK alerts us.

The extension turns those big "buy" buttons on retail sites into buttons that ask you instead if you want to put the item "on ice," or into what amounts to a virtual shopping account. You can only access the items you "put on ice" after a certain amount of time has passed—what Icebox calls the "cooling-off period."

You get to choose how long your cooling-off period is, so if you're just trying to make yourself think twice about purchasing something, you might set it to thaw out in a day or two, or for a big purchase you're eyeing, you could set it to be a much longer period, like 30 days—after which you'll really know whether or not you need (or really, really want) something. You can set up the extension to work for specific sites, in case you need to exempt, say, the Mental Floss store from your block.

When it comes to impulse purchases, that strong desire to buy something often fades over time, meaning that in many instances, you might not even end up clicking "buy" after your cooling period is over. During a season when all your favorite sites are publishing great gift guides, we probably all have a few shiny product pages we need to put on ice.

Get Icebox for free in the Chrome store.