Your spending habits go a long way in determining your financial health. Find out how to break bad spending habits.
1. Pinpoint a few bad financial habits
It’s not an easy one, but the first is to look at your spending and find a few bad habits. Don’t try to tackle them all at once. Try to change only one to three a time. One may be dinning out or wine. Another may be therapy shopping or needing designer labels to impress others. Whatever your bad financial habit, write it down or make a note on your phone.
See that these habits aren’t bringing value to your life or financial situation, and verbally make the commitment to change them. The best way is to do this is to tell your spouse or a close friend who will support your change.
2. Trigger happy, trigger sad
For most, habits-both good and bad- are triggered by an event or situation. Many make the morning trek through the divine –through for a gazillion calorie coffee and breakfast sandwich simply because of not taking the time to prepare the previous night or wake up early enough in the morning. Why don’t we have time! Is it because we stayed up too late to Netflix and chill? Was it that last glass of wine? Maybe it’s simply not planning ahead with lunches for the week.
Whatever the case, much of what we do in life is reactionary to what have or haven’t already been done. If you can identify the triggers, then you can start to eliminate them which will make it easier to stop your bad spending habit.
3. Out with the old, in with the new
The best and sometimes only way to get rid of bad habits is to replace them with new and better ones. Mel Robbins, in her famous Ted Talk that introduced the world to her 5-second rule, said she built the habit of counting down from five to zero to break the habit of lying in bed hitting snooze over each morning. Replacing a bad spending habit may not be easy as counting backwards from five to one, but there are smart ways to replace bad spending, such as learning more about money through money podcasts and money blogs.
4. Know why you want something better
When paying off #1m in credit card debt, it is important for you to know why you want to become debt free. Knowing why and then having a plan you can implement while enjoying life is key. For many, the consequences of bad financial habits nag at them and disrupt them from the life they want. so. What kind of life do you want! these are your whys. They are the reasons for improving yourself and your life. It’s to lose focus on what’s important.
5. Treat yourself
Milestone rewards are a great way to keep motivated. For example, if you’re breaking the habit of going out to lunch every day dropping #3000 a week on dining out, you could reward yourself with a once or twice a month lunch out once you’ve gotten into the habit of taking lunch to work. Maybe a stronger motivator would be a date night with your partner to celebrate how much money you’ve saved. You know what motivates you; just make sure that your reward doesn’t erase your financial progress nor trigger another bad financial habit.
Gandhi said, ‘’Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.’’
We all want an amazing destiny and having amazing habits is key to making that happen.
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