How to control spending habits

Many people send me mails asking me for tips for controlling their spending habits and ways that can help them handle money in a better way. In this article i am not going to tell you about superficial tips such as "make a budget" or "leave your wallet at home" but instead i will give you in depth guidance about bad spending habits and help you avoid them.

Before you can break any bad habit (including spending habits) you need to first understand why the bad habit was developed. Bad spending habits, like any other habit, is developed to serve a certain psychological purpose and once you become aware of that purpose controlling your spending habits will become an easy task.

Tips for controlling spending habits

Below are some tips for controlling your spending habits along with some psychological causes for over spending and improper handling of money.

1) Why are you spending money?: Many people go shopping or spend money when they feel bad or when they want to feel good rather than when they need the item they are buying. This is otherwise known as emotional spending where the person uses his spending habits to regulate his mood. The best way to control your emotional spending is to not look for saving tips but instead you must learn how to control your emotions so that they don't force you to over spend. (see Shopping addiction treatment for more information)
2) Self regulation and spending habits: Self regulation is the person's ability to regulate his desires and to commit to his goals. As a result of the way some people were raised up they developed self regulation problems (see How your father can affect your self regulation abilities. Now when people try to break a bad habit such as over spending they usually try to control the habit itself instead of trying to solve the other problem that resulted in the bad habit, in our case here its self regulation. Read the article self regulation and controlling bad habits for more information
3) Spending to feel in control: In my book The ultimate guide to breaking bad habits i said that Some people aren't aware of the fact that they sometimes spend money in order to feel in control of their life. Many of the bad habits people do including over spending can result from the person's desire to do a controlled action as a result of feeling that he has lost control
4) spending habits and escapement: The urge to spend money can sometimes be the direct result of the person's desire to escape from his problems. One of the best ways to control your spending habits is to learn how to face your problems instead of running from them (see escaping from reality

Other ways to control your spending habits

One of the best ways to control your spending habits is to find out what triggers your urge to spend money.

According to individual psychology each person might be doing the same habit for a completely different reason. The key to control your spending habits is to know when and why do you feel like spending money.

Once you discover the reason or reasons behind this desire to spend you can then come up with an action plan that suites you.

The problem with advice present everywhere about controlling spending money is that they don't take into account that people are different and that each person might need to do a completely different thing in order to control his spending habits. The ways that are going to help Sam control his spending won't be the ways that will help Sara because each of them is spending for a different reason.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself. The book The ultimate guide to breaking bad habits was released by 2knowmyself. The book will help you get over all bad habits that are haunting you in a short period of time.

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