No matter how much money you make, you will never be able to keep it if you do not know how to manage your savings. In addition, it is not just about learning how to put your money into investments, exchanges, or stocks. Controlling your spending is also useful because this is where your journey of accumulating a lot of capital starts. Read this article to learn how to stop overspending and find the best way to track expenses that will work for you.
It is not brand stuff that makes you wealthy
Many can relate to the situation when you come to school, and all your classmates are wearing expensive sneakers. Your parents refused to buy you the overpriced stuff. Most likely, when confronted with this, you felt worse than others. However, your parents might have been right, even if you did not understand them back then.
In today's world, people spend too much money on the brand, with no thought about the practicality and sometimes even the item’s beauty. We buy expensive things not because we like them but because they are costly and popular, which supposedly improves our status in the eyes of others. However, leave such worldviews for middle school. Trying to show off "wealth" through branded items often makes one look foolish. So, stop pretending and buy quality items at fair prices.
Buy cheap, buy twice
It is important to talk separately about quality things. When faced with the choice of buying a bag made of cheap, low-quality leatherette or real leather, we often think about price first. These two bags may look the same at first, so we gravitate towards the cheaper option. However, after a few weeks, you will already notice the difference between a quality and low-quality product. Conventionally, in the time that you tear down a good leather bag, you will have to change three or more bags made of leatherette, overpaying several times over.
Nevertheless, not only your wallet suffers from this attitude. Much more importantly, irrational overconsumerism harms our ecology by creating more garbage. So buy one expensive item instead of five cheap ones and make our world a little cleaner.
Learn to cook instead of spending money on eating out
We often spend a huge amount of money on eating out. Still, while no one is encouraging you to give up McDonald's or Chinese takeout forever, you should realize something. Namely, besides eating out is much more expensive than home cooking, constantly snacking at a fast food restaurant can negatively impact your health. You do not know what products a particular establishment uses or how much sunflower oil or harmful margarine they add to their dishes.
Consequently, it is a much better idea to cook at home with quality and healthy ingredients. You may even have to change something in your perception of life. Realize that you do not work for food. Most importantly, food should become your energy and help you work, develop yourself, and live a happy, healthy life.
Quit smoking not only to save your money but to save your life too
If you try to track monthly expenses for some time, you may notice that seemingly inexpensive bad habits like a pack of chips after work hours, cigarettes, or lottery tickets cost you a lot of money in the long term. Small spending habits can translate into big hits to our wallets. When you were a kid, you often saved up coins with a piggy bank to buy a bicycle, and your small money turned into a big sum. Now, your small expenses, on the contrary, stop you from buying something you really need.
When you cut back on your spending on unnecessary things, you will soon notice an improvement in your financial health. Ultimately, it is not about stopping pleasing yourself with small things. You can still go to the movie theater with your family or give your girlfriend a big bouquet of flowers. Nevertheless, give up the things that harm you; you will not only be richer, but you will also be much healthier and happier.
Unsubscribe to Netflix if you do not watch it
Not so popular but still quite relevant money-saving advice is to stop spending a lot of money on various subscriptions you do not use. For example, it often happens that after subscribing to Spotify for a month, people switch to Apple Music, forgetting to cancel their Spotify subscription. Thus, they accumulate many useless subscriptions, spending large amounts of money on an ongoing basis.
This is quite easy to fix by simply realizing you are wasting money. To stop wasting money, cancel all the subscriptions you don't use or choose more comfortable and economical plans (e.g., use couples or family plans to spend much less money). Approach it rationally: get rid of junk, but do not eliminate what you really need and enjoy.
Do everything good in moderation
Still, no matter what others tell you, you must not overdo it when it comes to finding ways to save money. Remember that by trying to save too much, you are likely to turn into a cheapskate, unable to enjoy life. Every expenditure of money will seem empty to you, and you will wither over your gold like a dragon in a cave. Everything must be in moderation, even your personal finance management.
Therefore, in order to save money, you actually do not need to be an overly sophisticated economist. There is no need to look for complicated articles and books on how to prevent spending money. You can start with simple things: stop smoking, stop buying coffee before every workday, buy one quality pair of shoes instead of many cheap ones, and so on. Save rationally – let it become a part of your life that does not interfere with your joy but, on the contrary, makes you feel better. Learn to cook, manage your time, and figure out what brings you joy. Finally, figure out which momentary pleasure will only hurt you in the long run.
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