Spending Your Money wisely | 8 Ways To Save More Money and Spend less
We all want to be wise with our money, right?
Sounds good in theory, but how do you actually put it into practice? Let’s take action today.
These quick, little improvements can have a big impact over time.
Improve your spending today with these 8 tips on how to spend money wisely:
- Make a Scale of Preference
- Make a list of things you really enjoy
- Avoid the things, places or people that drive you to make poor spending choices
- Review your regular spending for things to eliminate
- Review your regular spending to identify things to reduce
- Create a budget
- Start writing down each purchase you make
- Implement a “sleep on it” rule and put future spending on a calendar
Make a Scale of Preference “Spending Your Money wisely”:
Scale of preference is simply a concept that drives to satisfy the wants of an individual in the order of their priority and importance. Let us take a quick example. A man has 10,000$. He has a child, who needs fees of around 7000$.
He also wants to buy a TV set of 5000$. Since fees are the upmost priority in any parent, it takes first position in his list of wants. Now that is the scale of preference at work.
The best way to spend more wisely is to align your spending with spending with your priorities.
Are you even aware of your priorities?
Take a moment to write down the things that are most important to you in life. Is it security for your family?
Is it success in business?
Also, Is it helping others? Write these priorities down and then ask yourself this question: “am I spending my money on things with upmost importance?”
Then, ask “am I spending my money on things that aren’t in my scale of preference?”
Doing this little exercise will give you some clarity and help to guide you into thinking consciously about your spending.
Make a list of things you really enjoy:
Along the same lines as #1, you should be using your money to bring joy to your life.
You define what “joy” is. Go ahead and write that down. What brings you happiness?
Identify those things and then ask yourself if you are spending your Spending Your Money wisely in those areas.
More importantly, ask yourself why you are spending on things that aren’t on that list. Bottom line: avoid spending too much money on things that aren’t at the top of your “priority” list.
Avoid the things, places or people that drive you to make poor spending choices:
Can you identify the triggers to poor spending in your life?
Think about your spending over the past couple of weeks.
When did you make the worst decisions (i.e. spending money you didn’t have, spending on things you don’t value, etc.)?
What was the cause of your poor choice? If you can identify these weak points then you can begin to live your life in a way that helps to avoid some of these spending hot spots.
Review your regular spending for things to eliminate:
When was the last time you wrote down your list of monthly bills?
Take a moment to do a thorough spending review now.
List out all of your required Spending Your Money wisely for the month.
This includes rent or mortgage, insurance, debt payments, utilities, services, etc. Is there anything on that list that you don’t need or want?
It sounds absurd to ask such a question.
However, I’ll be the first to admit that in the past there were things on my list of monthly expenses that I didn’t need or want anymore. Odds are you have one or two yourself. If you find something to eliminate, do it.
An app like Truebill can help you identify expenses you may be able to eliminate.
Review your regular spending to identify things to reduce:
Next, take a second look at that list of monthly bills and see if there is a way to reduce the cost of any of them.
Could you call the provider and ask for a better rate? Could you call a competing provider to see if you can reduce your rates by switching?
If it’s a debt, could you do a balance transfer or consolidation that would help you reduce your rates and eliminate debt quicker?
Don’t like to call and negotiate yourself? Let BillFixers do it.
They saved me over $600 on my annual internet service bill.
Learn more about BillFixers here at my full review. Or just head over to BillFixers.com to try them out.
Create a budget:
On a basic level, a budget is simply a plan for your money.
If you know your expected income next month, write that number down. Then start applying that money to different things.
Start with taxes (if it isn’t already taken out), giving, and savings.
Then move to basic necessities: housing, food, insurance, utilities, transportation.
Finally, apply the rest of your income to other things you need or want. Open up an account with an online budgeting tool to streamline this process.
Start writing down each purchase you make:
Tracking brings awareness to any situation. Use your iPhone or other device to take spending notes throughout the day.
There are Apps for that I’m sure. Or simply carry around an old school pad and pen to jot down your spending.
Do this for a week and see if your spending improves.
Implement a “sleep on it” rule and put future spending on a calendar:
Decide today that for any purchase over X amount you will “sleep on it.”
It could be one night, a week, thirty days, whatever.
Just allow some breathing room in between your desire and your decision to buy. Obviously this gives you time to evaluate the purchase against your values and your budget.
Pull out a calendar and look at your upcoming events and life changes.
Will spending be necessary? Is so, then make a note of that and start building a list of future spending requirements.
This is somewhat different from a monthly budget because it looks a bit further out.
This does two things:
- Allows you to prepare by saving for the spending requirement, and
- It allows you time to shop around for the best price and lock in the lowest rates.
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave comment below
Comments 2