You're Burning Your Hard Earned Money If You Do These 8 Things Often

ProductivityYou're Burning Your Hard Earned Money If You Do These 8 Things Often Share: Productivity You're Burning Your Hard Earned Money If You Do These 8 Things Often Jenny Marchal Jenny Marchal is a freelance writer. Full Bio Saving money in today’s economy can sometimes feel impossible. Do you often find you earn an okay amount but don’t seem to have enough at the end of the month? Taking a good look at our spending habits and recognising how we use our money can go towards re-evaluating and cultivating a life where we only spend what’s necessary. 8 Daily Habits That Drain Your Money Unknowingly What can you do to help stay mindful of what you spend your money on? It’s all about adopting habits to help you be aware of how you spend your money but these are common habits we have that drain our money more easily. You Justify Buying the Cheap Stuff We think we’re saving money if we opt for the cheaper options but in truth, quality lasts longer. Looking at more expensive options as an investment rather than an unnecessary expense is a better mindset to have but we seldom think like this because in the moment more expensive equals more money. Spending money on items that last rather than cheap ones that need replacing more often will save you money in the long run. You Justify Buying Sale Items We’re led to believe that buying stuff on sale is saving money. If you’re in a supermarket and what you intend to buy is on sale, then great. But we can get caught up thinking we’re getting a bargain when really we’d never have bought that item in the first place were it not on sale! So curb unnecessary purchases – don’t get sucked in to the sale items and justify buying them because you believe you’re saving money – you’re not. Your Savings Account is Too Easy to Access It’s so easy these days to with internet banking, to have easy access to our savings. While your good intentions are slowly piling up in your savings account, if it’s easy to get to, you can sometimes delve into it if you feel you’re down on your money. So find savings accounts that aren’t so accessible and can’t be linked to your current account. This will help you think twice about transferring that money if it’s not so easy to do. You Don’t Wait 30 Days Before Big Purchases This is a good trick if you’re more of an impulse buyer. Impulse buying can drain our money extremely quickly and we can be very good at justifying why we need an item. If it’s a big purchase then do this 30 day rule before going ahead with it. You’ll be surprised at how much your mind can change in this period and often you’ll realise you probably don’t need to buy it or, even better, find a cheaper alternative in the meantime. You Don’t Set Realistic Goals When we set the intention of saving money, we can get lots of big ideas on how to do this but most of the time, although it feels good and productive to set these big goals, you can’t realistically stick to them in the long term. This then begins demotivation. So for example, instead of setting the goal of not eating out in the next month, set a more manageable goal of letting yourself eat out once a week instead of your normal 2 or 3 times. You Don’t Write Lists of What You Need Before Shopping (and Stick to It) This is similar to the impulse buying but more so when we’re food shopping. When you’re hungry, you will buy around 20% more food than if you went on a full stomach. Being purposefully mindful before you leave the house by making strict lists of what you need, will cut down more spending than you realise. Research recipes in advance and stick to only what you’ve written down. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t make the cut! You Waste Time Finding Cheap Deals The emphasis here is on time. We spend so much of our time researching in order to find the best deals and often in these moments the best deals actually pass us by or sell out. Think of time as money too – overthinking and overanalysing can waste you money despite thinking that you’re ultimately saving it. You Don’t Carve Out Time to Declutter Your House Decluttering your living space is one of the best things you can do to save money. Not only because you can sell many of your old items and actually make money, but also it transforms the space in your mind as well. Once you realise that you don’t need so many possessions to make you happy, it will shift your mindset and make you more aware of unnecessary spending in the future. Cultivating this mindset is what will save you the most money in the long-term and help you to re-evaluate what’s important to you. So adopt the mindfulness of spending your money to create a better way of saving it. About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide variety of content catered to encouraging individual growth and solving problems. Learn more about our mission Advertising Advertising What’s Popular now? Poor Sleep Quality Comes from All the Things You Do Since Morning Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Keep A "Friend Bank" So You Can Maintain The Right Kind Of Friendship! How I Become Creative by Spending 10 Minutes a Day to Exercise My Brain Muscle See How You Don't Have To Start Your Weight Loss Journey Sweaty! Recommended for You A Powerful Learning Approach That Smart Students Use to Learn Fast and Get Great Results 50 Soft Skills for Lifelong Happiness and Success 30 Days Without Fear: A Plan That Will Make You Feel So Carefree Like Never Before Want to Organize Your Messy Life? Take Up This 30-Day Challenge Learn More About Productivity What to Keep and What to Toss? Asking These 15 Questions Can Make Decluttering Easier The Smart Ways to Save Money Fast (Even If You're a Big Spender) Successful People Seldom Worry Too Much Because They Master This Thinking Skill How to Save Money Effectively By Having a Minimalist Lifestyle Love what you're reading? You're now one click away from getting all the best ideas on Lifehack for free! Subscribe to Lifehack Newsletter to end negativity and get things done fast. Scroll down for the next article Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Productivity Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Jenny Marchal Jenny Marchal is a freelance writer. Full Bio Sitting down and setting your life goals can be exciting and motivating. It gives us purpose, sets clear intention, makes us feel productive and creates the feeling of moving forward. But have you ever started out making a mental or physical list of your goals only to end up with quite a few? Then when you start acting on them, they either end up cast aside or only half achieved? Having goals has been drummed into us from an early age but are having all these goals actually hindering us? Warren Buffett, one of the most successful businessmen in the world today, questions the need for having so many goals. Instead he puts his success down to eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire. Warren Buffett asked his pilot to list 25 priorities in his life To illustrate Buffett’s idea, there’s a great story involving his personal airplane pilot of 10 years, Mike Flint, and how Buffett helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy. Buffett asked Flint to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top career goals. Once Flint spent time doing this he came back and presented them to Buffett. He then asked Flint to pick out the top 5 most important goals. So at this point Flint now had two separate lists – the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals. Like many of us, Flint concluded that he would focus primarily on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 as and when he could find the time. However, Buffett stopped him and said that this is actually the path of becoming unsuccessful because really he should now throw away his list of 20 altogether – no matter how important many of them may be – and focus solely on the top 5. Why? Because that list of 20 is essentially a distraction. Average people don’t know they should AVOID seemingly important things in their lives The reason we often never succeed with our goals is because we don’t prioritize, focus and therefore, complete, the important few. It’s human to get demotivated and distracted – two feelings that can be the death of our goals. The bigger the list of goals we have, the more chance there is to give up and move on to the next one in the hope that this one will succeed. If what Malcolm Gladwell claims is true, to become an expert in any field we must spend 10,000 hours of deliberate practice towards gaining knowledge in that area. That equates to 20 hours each week for almost a year, for a total of 10 years. So imagine Flints original list of 25 goals – that would mean it would take him 250 years to fully master his complete list. You can see how having too many goals can lead you down the path to a less successful and fulfilling life. Make sure you keep the “Avoid-at-all-cost list” Minimizing has become a hot topic when it comes to living the best life we can and this also applies to our life goals. Like our physical stuff, it can be hard to make a decision to throw certain goals out of the window when they feel important to us. But the process itself allows us to work out our priorities and what’s truly important. Try writing out 25 goals – whether it’s long term goals or even short term weekly or monthly goals – and start the process of prioritising in order to discover your top 5. Now, instead of literally throwing the list of 20 away completely, label this your avoid-at-all-costs list to serve as a reminder of what not to focus on. This is the list that will decrease your time and focus and ultimately your success. In other words, if you start working on this list you are in danger of having 20 half-finished goals instead of 5 completed ones. Whatever your top 5 goals are, whether you want to learn a new language or skill, or work towards a particular career goal, make a conscious effort to stick to these. Keep motivated to achieve these goals and don’t wander onto your second list. Remember, your time investment is key to success and this time will be compromised the more goals you take on. Get the success you want: prioritize efficiently, focus intently and stick to it. References Featured photo credit: Fortune Live Media via flickr.com About Lifehack Lifehack is about helping you improve your life through efficient and comprehensive learning. By leveraging the vast amount of knowledge available to us, we explore and present a wide variety of content catered to encouraging individual growth and solving problems. Learn more about our mission Advertising Advertising What’s Popular now? Poor Sleep Quality Comes from All the Things You Do Since Morning Warren Buffett Says Most People End up Being Average Because They Don't Keep This List Keep A "Friend Bank" So You Can Maintain The Right Kind Of Friendship! How I Become Creative by Spending 10 Minutes a Day to Exercise My Brain Muscle See How You Don't Have To Start Your Weight Loss Journey Sweaty! Recommended for You 100 Life Hacks That Make Life Easier If You Understand These 5 Rules In Psychology, You Can Live A Much Easier Life Think Like a Billionaire: How to Get Rich Even If You Don't Have Much Now 50 Soft Skills for Lifelong Happiness and Success Learn More About Productivity 6 Rules Successful People Live By to Learn Faster and Better Than Everyone Else Will You Be Highly Successful in the Future? These 8 Signs Can Foretell the Answer What to Keep and What to Toss? Asking These 15 Questions Can Make Decluttering Easier The Smart Ways to Save Money Fast (Even If You're a Big Spender) Love what you're reading? You're now one click away from getting all the best ideas on Lifehack for free! Subscribe to Lifehack Newsletter to end negativity and get things done fast. Feedback