Limit Your Shopping Habit by Focusing Your Energies on Creating a Hobby
Buying new gadgets, clothes, or just random junk can turn into a hobby in itself. If you’d rather save money, fix dopamine by making things, not shopping.
As personal finance site The Money Habit explains, we get the same satisfaction from making things as we get from shopping. If you paint what you are proud of, or write what you like, there is now something new in your life that makes you happy. Buying a new gadget might give you a similar rush, but it’s probably more fleeting.
When you switch from consumer to producer, you will get a rush almost constantly. You will have a lot of fun improving your craft, pondering ways to improve your craft, and even berating yourself for how what you have created could be made better. Sequential, sustainable improvements that provide a constant stream of satisfaction and new skills involved will provide the newness and engagement your brain craves. Best of all, it will cost you next to nothing. In fact, the better you accomplish your chosen project, the more likely you will be able to charge for it.
Of course, hobbies also cost money. Ask any artist. However, when you can’t spend money, you can always find out more about your craft online or practice with what you already have. Even if you end up spending money on your habit, you will at least acquire a skill, not a set of things that quickly depreciate in value.
ABP: The Secret of Not Wanting Fashionable Things | Money Habit Through Rockstar Finance