Whether you’re already in financial difficulty or you’re wanting to avoid a situation where you end up there, looking at how to get your spending under control is always a good idea. By watching what you spend and not being wasteful it often means you have more money to do other stuff you have been looking forward to. Here are some ways to get your spending under control.
Take Control of Your Finances
Taking control of your finances and knowing where you stand currently is one of the best ways to take control of your financial situation. This allows you to track what you are spending and even where you may be in debt. If you have plenty of debt then looking at ways you can improve your debt situation means that you are able to work towards more financial freedom. It is worth doing what you can to learn more about debt consolidation, as this often allows you to pay less per month as well as working your way out of debt.
Work Out A Budget
It is all well and good trying to get control of your spending, but you really need to know what you’re spending and where you are wasting money. Setting up a monthly budget is a great way to help you take control and work out what you can be spending and where. When you first start you should look at setting a reasonably generous budget so that you are likely to stick to it and then you can decrease this as you start to gain more control. If you set yourself up a budget that is too harsh to start with, you’ll find it impossible to stick to.
What Makes You Want To Spend?
There are different reasons why we might be frivolous with money and that isn’t always about just needing to buy more than we can afford. There are often underlying triggers that can make it more likely that we’ll reach for our credit card – emotional stress, loneliness etc. Try to look at the pattern of when you spend money and what you are spending it on, so you can work out what you might be able to do to break this pattern.
Set Short Term Goals
Alongside this, setting yourself financial goals is a great way to be motivated. These don’t have to be big aims, it could be to have XX amount in your savings account by a certain day or saving up to do an activity you wouldn’t have been able to afford before. Whatever it takes to help you be motivated to stick to your new spending regime. At the end of the day, doing something like this is going to be a big change, so you want to do what you can to ensure you have every chance of being as successful in achieving your new goals as possible.
If you have any foolproof ways to get your spending under control we’d love you to share them
*Collaborative post