How To Stop Spending?

Ratison

FireWyrm, please can you break down some more products like you did with crisps? It's really helpful - I will not be buying crisps any time soon!

FireWyrm

Ratison wrote: »

FireWyrm, please can you break down some more products like you did with crisps? It's really helpful - I will not be buying crisps any time soon!

They are all right for a treat, but just bear in mind that they are an obscenely expensive treat. Almost all commercially manufactured 'food' works out like this if you do the maths. To be fair, it is generally considered perfectly reasonable to factor in a 400% mark-up on restaurant food too.

Another example...sausage rolls.

You can buy a single packet of pre-rolled puff pastry sufficient to make two 225g of sausage rolls for £1 (pastry weighs 1lb). The meat will be £1.55 per lb. So, to make 2lb of sausage rolls will cost you £2.55 and about 15 minutes of your time. Now, you can buy cheap sausage rolls which taste like cardboard for less, this is true, but Ginsters for instance charge £1.50 for 240g all told (4 x 60g). You can make a whole 2lb of sausage roll for less than £3 and it's fresh. Add a smear of grain mustard to the meat and close the pastry and you have something pretty damn good.

Not quite as dramatic as crisps to be sure, but there are many more options that work out far cheaper to make than to buy if only for application of a little time and effort.

dimestorediamond

Its definitely possible to wean yourself off buying junk.

I used to blow up to £500 on consumer driven rubbish purchases a month!

I have one particularly skint month where I literally couldn't afford anything, and it set me on the path to not buying. I stopped looking at websites because it got me down I was skint, and even when I NEED to buy stuff, I can't do it easily. LOL.

I had to buy new clothes because I lost weight - 3/4 of purchases have gone back, just couldn't love them enough to justify them. I've gone really tight fisted these days, totally worth it.

liuhutOz

I associate what I buy with how many hours I have to work to earn the cash to buy it. It seems daft that I have to work for two hours to pay for a takeaway just because Im too tired to cook after work

*Jellie*

Lots of great ideas here.
I found the financial independence program outlined in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robbin very useful. There are free downloads of each step here

I find that spending is linked to a series of sometimes complex habits that you want to work on changing one at a time. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is an excellent read and this method is outlined in it.

Step 1
Identify habit to change- what is the one spending habit that will make the most difference or which is going to be relatively easy to tackle (sense of achievement will make you want to keep going with other habits.

Step 2
Awareness. Start to keep a note of everytime you do this behaviour. Be a non- judgemental scientist as you do this. Keep a tally on paper or using a phone app or cheap finger counter.

Step 3
Habitual behaviours provide us with a reward (even the behaviour is negative). You need to find the reward you are craving to find a positive behaviour that will provide the same reward. Think through possible rewards for this habit. Is it a sense that you have worked hard and are having a treat? Are you feeling stimulated rather than bored? Are you buying something with a sense of purpose that you will then sell it, craft with it? Take your time to observe the behaviour and determine possible rewards.

Step 4
Experiment with other ways to get the same reward. Make a list of the possible rewards you have identified. For each come up with a positive behaviour that could give the same reward. Try them out to work out which reward you are actually craving. If one of the possibilities was recreation (you are sat in front of TV and with ipad and it is simply something to do) try another way to meet the craving (choose something you want to watch and actually watch it, read, craft, play patience, do something fun but non speedy on ipad). Once you've chosen the best alternative try it for a few days and write down whether you still had the craving to shop after this new activity and quickly note how you are feeling. Try experimenting like this for all the possible rewards you may be craving. Did any of the experiments stop the craving? If so you have found your reward and can use the replacement. If not stay aware and keep experimenting!

Step 5
Identify your trigger or cue for the behaviour. Everytime you get the urge to carry out the behaviour write answers to the following
What time is it?
Where am I?
How am I feeling?
Who else is about?
What was I doing when the urge hit?

Hopefully after doing this for a while you can find the trigger e.g it is always about 7pm, you have just eaten and tidied up, you are with your OH, you are feeling tired and want to relax. Now you need to link the trigger to the new positive behaviour you have identified. Maybe you have decided you will watch tv. When you finish dinner and get ready to sit down don't bring your ipad to the room and deliberately decide what to watch. Or go and get you sewing....

Hopefully that all makes sense and will help someone. Sorry it is a long post!

moohound

liuhutOz wrote: »

I associate what I buy with how many hours I have to work to earn the cash to buy it. It seems daft that I have to work for two hours to pay for a takeaway just because Im too tired to cook after work

I do this too, my son likes comics with plastic tat attached and they cost £4, I earn £17 an hour, so after tax, NI and pension thats about £11 left, so I would have to work for 21 mins to pay for that, and it ends up in the bin, I don't think so.

I will happily buy a comic book, that takes a week to read and can be re-read for £6 though.

quantic

Me and my partner used to be like this, her worse than me - I think its a bit like smoking, you just gotta quit cold turkey or you slowly go back to how you were. The trick is to try and quit for long enough so that you can begin to see the rewards.

If someone put a load of junk on one table and a savings account with £2,000 in it on the other I'm sure you would go for the £2,000. I suppose it boils down to what you would prefer, financial security and long term goals or instant gratification.

More recently, one thing I have found to be quite good is to stock up on food items which do not spoil, such as frozen meat, crisps etc rather than going for them every week - not only does this save you money but it also means you are less likely to need to pop into the shops, we go for milk and bread etc each week but have most other things in.

Set your bills to come out on the 1st/2nd of the month so that you know exactly how much you have left which may act as an aid to help you stop spending when you realise you don't have as much?

I don't think there is a one size fits all approach to this but these are some of the things that stopped us. I genuinely believe it is better to be more frugal, not just for the financial sense - I think the more things you have the more things you worry about, your belongings start to own you in a sense. We recently moved house and got rid of a lot of stuff and I find the house a much more soothing and relaxing place to be now.

xbethanyx

thank you so much for all your replies and being so kind... I was just getting really out of control and now have vet bills to pay and getting further into debt so I have to give myself a good shake! For example last month I really wanted a new house phone (don't need one as barely use the one I had) but i sat for ages online choosing one then wanted it straight away so went to the shops and bought it at like 8pm So bad!!

xbethanyx

Jagraf wrote: »

If you were the only person on this planet, would you want a fast car / posh boots / flashy handbag etc. if not, then expensive stuff and stuff in general is about ego - and what others think of you.

X

WOW!! :eek: I did not think like this at all but this one really hits home!! Thank you!

FireWyrm

xbethanyx wrote: »

WOW!! :eek: I did not think like this at all but this one really hits home!! Thank you!

Or...

The practice of buying stuff you dont need with money you dont have to impress people you dont like and who dont even know you exist.

Makes total sense.