March Money Challenge: Get Rid of Spending Drawbacks
We help readers save money all year long with Lifehacker Ultimate Money Challenge . This month, we’re bringing back one of last year’s favorites: Get rid of your under-spending .
We all have problems with spending, and while we don’t want to stop you from spending money on what you love, we still want to help you spend more mindfully. This means cutting back on the things you buy on impulse and then regret . Your weakness in spending may be related to restaurants. Or it could be gadgets. Or it could be casual daily deals. If you are not sure what your weakness, find time to look at your budget and analyze your expenses . Your finances may already be optimized, but if you’re like most people, you have a few areas to work on.
This month we want you to tell us what area you have a spending problem in and how you will try to solve it. We’ve got a few ideas and tools to help you get started:
- Control impulse spending by asking how buying improves your life
- Think of impulse buying as the enemy of your financial goals
- Amazon Contemplate makes you think twice about shopping on Amazon
- Get out of debt by adopting a cash-only policy
- Method “3D”: identify, distract, delay
- Delete the saved online payment information
At the end of the month we will all report back and compare our expenses. Ideally, you will break this habit and make it permanent. Of course, you want to save the money you save too – it doesn’t make sense to cut impulsive spending in one area just to explode it in another. Are you in business? The sound is off at the bottom!