Spending awareness...? Best method you've found for changing bad spending habits?

[SedimentaryRock]

I'm trying to stop the leaks in my montly spending.

If someone came to me and asked how to lose weight, I'd say track every single thing you eat and drink, and you'll find out exactly why you're not at your goal weight. I'm very successful managing this for myself, so I thought it would be easy to apply this to tracking my money. But no...I've found that my habits are so AUTOMATIC I keep forgetting I'm even supposed to be doing something. Just oblivious to it. Flies right out of my head.

This strategy can't fail once I implement it, but I HAVE failed this first month. Any tips---like just don't go on the internet, freeze your credit cards (doesn't help online), eletric shock therapy??

I'm so tired of blowing money on more stuff I don't need instead of putting it to use. Progress happens so fast when you focus.

[Anonymous]

I have heard of putting credit cards in a ziplock and putting them in your actual freezer lol

But what I have done that really helps is I keep all my cards in my safe.

I do not carry cards on my person. Just a $20 bill

I keep all my bills, mortgage, etc on my budget list. Pay each month etc.

Basically every penny that is bills i spend, 

anything else, I just do not spend.

Anything that is purchased big or small is not purchased right away.

It is pondered upon, and sometimes I even discuss with the misses.

This includes anything, even fast food, which does not happen all that much.

Once you see the cash pile up and the zeros digitally grow, it makes it all the easier and worthwhile

I feel like what we would have called the cheapskates and rich but stingey when younger,

but it all makes sense now.

Mortgage is almost paid off (bought first home in 2011) 

2 cars paid off (my 2014 and 15)

and really only utilities

And this is with 4 kids living at home and solo income 

Have a temptation to buy something?  Just put that in your safe or transfer that from your checking to savings.....

and dont buy it.

[Anonymous]

I grabbed an app called Fudget and started making manual budgets for things. Entering every entry by hand, it gives me time to reflect on whether I really needed to spend that money or not. My spending is down over 50% since I started using it. I used to be awful with money and now I never have to worry about whether or not I'm going to have money in my accounts after I pay bills. It's very nice to be low income and able to say that!

I have all of my cards set up to generate a transaction alert and I have trained myself to immediately add transactions to the ledger when they come through. I also have one of those checking accounts that rounds up transactions to the nearest dollar and moves that amount to savings which makes it easier to both save and to add transactions to the budget since I don't have to fuss around with exact change. 

The real key is to just force yourself to check the budget every day and add your transactions. 

[Nomad3]

Check out your spending by category, like:

Cigarette cost monthly x12

Fast food cost monthly x12

You see those commas and it might help you quit certain things or make cutbacks.

Putting into perspective helps me anyways, swiping for $5 here and there no big deal, look at the annual and that's $3,000 whoa I could have used that for something better

[Anonymous]

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@Nomad3 wrote:

Putting into perspective helps me anyways, swiping for $5 here and there no big deal, look at the annual and that's $3,000 whoa I could have used that for something better

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Just my opinion, but I think many that have financial issues, that is the culprit

Seems like just $5 wont hurt, but everyday occurances and it adds up massive

I personally do not go to mini marts and buy "sports" beverages, coffee, candy bars, snacks, sandwiches etc.

I know personally many do, and it can translate to $25/dayX20 work days = $500/mo or $6000.00 a year!

And that is just for snacks!!!

I drink bottled water and refill two of them with my fridge every day before i head off to work.

It is one of my pet peeves, sometimes i get sick to my stomach to see the amounts people spend.

It is the simple things and small amounts that just seem ike nothing is wrong.

But it all adds up

[Revelate]

1) Budget app, I've used YNAB before and highly recommend it.

1a) Anything that you can link against your accounts that categorizes your spending, #1 needs that too because it needs to be darned simple.  I am using Personal Capital for my spending tracking these days, but I didn't need the formality of a strict budgeting app.

2) Be ruthlessly honest with yourself after seeing the spending, and make adjustments.

End of the day you want something that works for you, me personally I want an app to track finances so that is the route I went.  May was part of my drunken fiesta spending (all the crap I needed for a new place that I didn't think about beforehand and making the new mortgage payment early anyway but autopay should be functional for July), and June has been back on financial track even if the mortgage breakout is artificially low this month but you can see how things are broken down.

[Anonymous]

I write a budget for each month.  I use my preferred pen and paper.   I have a page I track category spending for gas, eating out and groceries as well as a section for listing all non-budgeted purchases.  It is eye opening to see how much we spend in some months on non-budgeted items and how we can overspend in the food categories.  I also use Mint to view category spending.   I find tracking and then going back to reflect extremely helpful.  Since my budget is pen and paper I have to go back a manually tally at the end of the month.  When I see that we missed our savings goal  or have less to put towards mortgage principal it makes we want to investigate what happened.   Did we forget an item that should have been budgeted or did we just lose our minds.  

You should know exactly where you money went.  Even better, you should tell it where to go.  

[Anonymous]

Funny I just watched this video, it gives a broad range on how I mentioned being cheap.

Take it for what it is.

Hope it can help out a bit to a degree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkaDAUAXuDk

[iced]

Things like cutting up cards, hiding them, and the like all are ways to address the symptoms. What you really need to do is address the problem itself.

Why do you feel compelled to spend? You're blowing money on things you don't need for a reason, and that reason is very likely psychological. In other words, your spending is satisfying some psychological need you have.

Figure out what that need is, why you have it, and find alternative ways to satisfy it. There's more than one way to scratch an itch, and if you find a way that doesn't involve buying crap you don't need, your spending problem will take care of itself.

[tacpoly]

If you want to know what you're spending on, why not put all your spend on one credit card (you can switch cards monthly to keep others active if you have to). Don't carry cash. You'll see in hard numbers how much you spend/waste, where, and hopefully on what. 

As for stopping wasteful spending, it really depends on you. I go to stores only when I want to buy something. But what do I know, I spent $50k shopping last month (it was stress relief).