This is good stuff - the video is particularly good.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that there is a lot of research and planning to get you to spend more when you walk into a store. Lee Eisenberg,the author of “Shoptimism” says that the retail outlets are experts at playing on your emotions, your perceptions and your lack of critical reasoning.

How Stores Trick You Into Spending More

Everyone should read this...

This is a very interesting paper: Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security, by Frank Stajano and Paul Wilson. Paul Wilson produces and stars in the British television show The Real Hustle, which does hidden camera demonstrations of con games. (There's no DVD of the show available, but there are bits of it on YouTube.) Frank Stajano is at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

The paper describes a dozen different con scenarios -- entertaining in itself -- and then lists and explains six general psychological principles that con artists use:

The Psychology of Being Scammed

How to buy furniture:

First, we've been told that things should be "perfect" from the moment we move in. As a result, we may purchase the first thing we see that we can afford, just to fill a space. But if we continue on that road, in 20 years we'll most likely end up with a mish-mash of furniture and accessories that no longer work, with cheaply made items that must be discarded, and some trendy items that don't seem to fit anywhere anymore.

How to avoid this? As with many things, planning and goals will go a long way toward accumulating furnishings of value. Unless you have money to burn, planning will help focus your decisions and provide goals for all of your home purchases (I like to call them "adoptions" since you are in essence bringing something into your home that you'll need to provide space for, clean, repair, and dust for its lifetime with you.)

A 20 Year Furniture Plan