Hey! I’m Varun Suresh (proof). I'm the co-founder of Tame The Imp, a web/SMS-based service that uses behavioral psychology and gamification to help people stop impulse spending.
Americans spend around $652B a year on impulse purchases; that’s more than $3,000 per person.
Before discovering the huge impulse spending problem, I was focused on building a debt-free alternative to Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). But after speaking 1:1 with 200+ Gen Z consumers, I realized that BNPL was a symptom of something deeper. The money-related pain point that kept cropping up in these conversations was ordering Uber Eats when exhausted from work, or doomscrolling at 1am and buying random clothes -- and being unable to stop. In other words, the real antagonist was impulse spending, because it’s something people feel like they should be able to control but can’t.
Tame The Imp takes the same underlying mechanic that makes impulse spending so easy -- seeking dopamine -- and turns saving money into a game.
It uses psychological levers like positive reinforcement on a variable rewards schedule (get random plants when you stick to your spending goals) and negative punishment (The Imp steals a plant if you overspend) that have historically been used for money-draining things like casinos/lotteries but to actually do good instead.
Ask me anything about the psychology of impulse spending (r/shoppingaddiction has a bunch of DIY tactics to combat it), habit formation, or about the consumer banking industry.
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