It definitely can be. Picking up a brand new hobby and blowing money on body jewellery which you can't even use yet - at the start of a new school year when you should otherwise be spending money out with friends and focused on your studies? Yeah, I can see how that is some hypomanic spending!

I can tell how my spending goes based upon my surrounding circumstances.

For example. This August I definitely spent over $3000, mostly on stuff but also on food and a few activities. For most people, this would look like some manic spending. Most of the time for me this would definitely qualify. However. I live somewhere without access to shopping, and I do NOT purchase clothes online. So I had deliberately taken an extra suitcase with the intentions of filling it up. Yeah, so I did go over my budget... but I was spending within my means (I have just mostly depleted my savings for now, but I'll get it back up).

In comparison, I spent a crapton of money during the school year on books for my classroom - each time they got a scholastic book order, I'd buy some more books. Whichever ones I thought seemed cool. There were definitely times where I got the books and was like "why did I buy these? They're too hard for my students!". So while I wasn't spending a HUGE amount of money, it was money that I wasn't spending carefully and that's not my normal behaviour. Also - I was fairly broke for most of last year because I had just gotten a new apartment and was busy trying to furnish it. That money that I spent on books could, and should, have gone towards things for the apartment. I consider those classroom purchases to be a bit of a hypomanic spending, the times when I bought a crapton of books anyway.