Three Tips To Help You Develop Better Spending Habits
Are you looking to improve your spending habits? Looking for tips to save more? We always talk about discipline and willpower when it comes to doing better with our money, but we all subconsciously do things without even thinking about it.
As soon as we wake up, we grab our phones, we instantly reach for soda with our lunch, and we are all guilty of adding small items at the checkout counter. These bad habits play a role in our productivity, our health, our mindset, and our money. Up to 40% of our daily actions are performed unconsciously, based on our habits and patterns.
For many of us, our spending habits are out of control, so in order to save money, invest, pay off debt and stay on budget, we need to learn how to develop good spending habits and routines. However, developing these behaviors can be incredibly difficult, and many people struggle due to two core reasons:
- Being able to remember what we want and why we want it in moments that count. For example, remembering not picking up a random item at checkout because we consciously remember that we want to save for a vacation!
- Lacking the motivation to develop good habits. Laziness can lead to you picking up fast food or getting a takeaway for dinner instead of cooking.
Tips to change your behaviors
Overcoming these behaviors and developing new ones is tough. To help you, we have taken a closer look at three top tips that can help you understand how to control spending habits:
- Understand what habits you want to change
The first thing that you need to do is to become conscious of the spending habits you want to change. If you are spending too much money, then the first thing you should do is figure out what you are spending your money on. For example, do you have too many subscriptions? Are you eating out too much? Are you spending too much on Amazon?
Looking at your bank statements and tracking your expenses will help you to identify where you are spending too much. This is an important step as if you don’t know the bad habits, you won’t be able to change them.
- Identify good spending habits you want to develop
Once you have identified your bad spending behaviors, then the next step is to figure out what good habits you want to adopt to replace them. Simply stopping bad habits is tough, whereas replacing them with positive ones is much easier. Instead of eating out, you could replace that with cooking at home, which not only saves money but can be healthier too. Equally, instead of impulsively shopping, you should plan your purchases and buy them when needed.
Spending some time brainstorming all of the possible good habits that could replace your bad ones is very important and can help you cut your wasted spending and boost your savings.
- Start setting routines
Now that you have your list, it is time to start actually making changes. This is the hardest part as you have to start implementing new routines to replace your bad spending habits with the positive ones you previously identified. This is where your organization and planning is essential, as you are going to have to consciously do this until, over time, it becomes subconscious.
To do this, start by thoroughly planning your day. You can use your phone to set reminders or use a paper planner separated into time blocks (I have an entire playlist on how to start planning your life if you have never used a planner before!). Whichever you opt for, you need to make sure you incorporate all of those good habits you listed, as this will help you to stay on top of them.
Personally, I keep a list of all of my routines in a section of my planner so that I have my list with me at all times. I also keep track of my habits and mark them off every time I complete them. That way each day I consciously flip to this section of my planner and ask myself, have I checked my bank account? How much money did I spend yesterday? Am I on track and staying on budget? I promise you, once you start tracking, your habits will begin to change.
Ready to transform your spending habits?
If you are wondering how to control your spending habits, implementing these three tips will help you to focus your mind and develop positive new behaviors. If you want to know the specific actions that have saved me money, then you should consider joining me over at TOM Academy.
TOM Academy is my group coaching program over on Patreon, in which I teach twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, covering a range of topics around planning life and money. This week, we are diving into a live class on ‘How to Build and Stick to Routines’, which has been designed to help you save money using those personal money tips that have saved me thousands.
You will also get access to all of the previous classes we’ve covered within TOM Academy, alongside all of the downloads that I sell in my Etsy shop and special videos that are only created for my Patreon group.
