This is a collaborative post by Ellie Jo with ways to control your spending.
Money, or rather lack of it, is a huge source of stress. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to stop spending. Even when you begin each month with good intentions, eventually you find yourself making pointless purchases. No matter how you justify this spending to yourself, the results are always the same – An empty bank account. Thankfully, overspending is a habit that you can learn to break. With that in mind, here are six ways to get your spending under control.
How to Control Your Spending
Watch What You Spend
Many people have no idea where their money goes every month. They buy whatever they want or need whenever they want or need it, hoping that there’s enough money left to cover the bills. If there isn’t quite enough, they vow to pay double next month, but rarely do. Thankfully, with a budgeting app, you can track your spending for months, which will help you to make cutbacks.
Make A Monthly Budget
Zeroing out your accounts makes it difficult to overspend. However, that doesn’t mean that you should spend every dollar you earn. Instead, give every dollar a purpose by making a monthly budget. Whatever money you don’t have to spend, you should put into savings. Having every dollar allocated to a specific cause means that you’ll be less tempted to make silly purchases.
Stick To Cash Payments
Paying by card is much easier than paying cash. Because of this, you should stick to cash payments from now on. This means that you’ll find it harder to spend money when you don’t need to. If you prefer to pay by card, then check out Green Dot Prepaid Card reviews. These cards come with a lower risk of overspending because you can only spend the card balance.
Delete Those Card Details
When you head to the mall or grocery store, paying cash can curb your spending. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option when shopping online. With your debit and credit card details saved on every website and device, it’s easy to make impulse purchases. That being said, you can delete your card details, making it harder to pay, which gives you a chance to change your mind.
Know Your Spending Triggers
Different emotional, psychological, and environmental triggers can contribute to your spending. If you remove these triggers, you lessen the chance that you will overspend. Because of this, you should take a look at when and where you spend money. Consider the time of day, mood, store, and shopping partners, as any of these factors could be triggering you to splash the cash.
Borrow Anything You Can
Clothes, books, DVDs, and computer games are just a few things that many people waste money on. The good news is, you don’t have to. While owning these things makes sense sometimes, if you only intend on using them once, then borrow them instead. A library card allows you to borrow many different things for free, including most of what is mentioned above.
Overspending can ruin your finances, but with the advice above, it’s possible to get your spending under control.
