How to Curtail Uncontrolled Spending

Limit temptations such as impulsive spending and eating out.

Tightening your budget will pay off in the long run. Even though cutting back your spending may seem impossible or even unthinkable, it is often a necessity. If you have difficulty controlling how you spend your money, it is important to understand some of the causes of unchecked spending so that you can eventually develop solutions to curtail your expenditures. Reducing uncontrolled spending ultimately boils down to making sacrifices that change your behavior and values.

Instructions

Preliminaries

1. Write down all of your expenses on a piece of paper. Include the largest expenses all the way down to the smallest expenses. Even small expenses occurring at high frequencies over long periods of time can amount to large sums of money.

2. Divide your expenses into two categories -- necessary and unnecessary -- and list them on a piece of paper. This will help you distinguish between what you absolutely need and what you simply want. Necessary expenses include rent, groceries, health, and energy such as gas and electricity. Unnecessary expenses include entertainment such as movies and eating out, cigarettes, and clothing that you don't absolutely need.

3. Post your list of expenses in a conspicuous location that you frequent such as your kitchen or office. This will help remind you which expenses are OK and which expenses you must eradicate.

4. Cap your unnecessary expenditures at a certain dollar amount. The dollar amount may be high initially, but as you improve you can reduce the size of the expenditure cap at regular intervals to encourage you to drastically reduce and ultimately eliminate all of your unnecessary spending.

Strategies

1. Get rid of your credit cards. If you absolutely must have a credit card, at the very least reduce the amount of credit cards you have to only one or two. Credit cards are extremely treacherous because you do not have to have the money to pay for items or services when you purchase them.

2. Re-evaluate your values and priorities. Do you really need that pair of shoes you only intend to wear once or twice? Is smoking worth not being able to pay your rent on time? Curtailing uncontrolled spending means you must assess whether what you think is important to you is really all that important.

3. Limit your exposure to advertising. This may include downloading a program that blocks Internet advertising, watching less television so you can't watch commercials or canceling a magazine subscription.

4. Make purchases in cash only. Because cash is tangible, it is often more difficult to part with cash as you physically see it dwindle than it is to swipe a card that doesn't physically show you money leaving your wallet.

Tips & Warnings

• Never let your spending take control of you.

References

• Investopedia: 5 Ways to Control Emotional Spending
• Getting Finances Done: How to Control and Track Your Spending Effortlessly