Mind Tricks to Spend Less

Trick yourself into increasing your savings account, when you use these mind tricks to spend less, and save more for your future!

Can we “life hack”, or better yet … “mind hack” our way toward a bigger bank account? You betcha!

Hear the audio from my guest segment this week on Indianapolis’ B105.7 Radio:

I was reading an article recently about some mind tricks that basically trick yourself into spending less.

It talked about how we can change our environmental surroundings to trigger behaviors which will lead us to making better choices about how, when, and why we spend our money.

Pre-commitment

One example is pre-commitment. It’s like you’re making a promise, or a binding commitment to yourself, that the next time you come into some “fun money” (that’s what I call it) … that you’ll set aside at least a portion of it, if not all of it.

• Will you receive an annual bonus sometime this year? Tax refund next year? Put at least a portion of that into savings.
• Are you paying off your car this year? Set up a transfer of what you were spending on that car payment, to be automatically deposited into your savings account each month.
• Even on a smaller scale … ready to cash in your Ibotta rewards? You can transfer it to PayPal or Venmo like cash, or transfer to a retail/restaurant gift card.

The money-saving benefit to transferring to a gift card is you can use that “pre-commitment” to make the value your budget for that store or restaurant. 

1. Check if there are any bonus promotions! (Only take advantage of this if you actually do/would shop at that store).
2. $20 doesn’t go a long way at DSW, but I’ll transfer to an Amazon card for those incidentals that tend to creep up on us. (Or, let my balance accrue until someone in the family needs new shoes.)

Transitions

The author also talked about when you have a transition happening in your life – say your birthday, do something for your future self and, say, increase your 401K contribution. It might not be on the top of your list of things to do for your birthday, but your future self will thank you!

Or, it can be as simple as deciding that the first Monday of the month you’ll review your family budget.

It’s kind of like giving yourself a “fresh start” for the week/month/year, and it might actually be motivating!

Change

And lastly, changing your spending environment. Would you like to reduce how much you spend on eating out? Give yourself a pre-paid debit card with your dining out budget, once a month – similar to the example above when cashing out rewards bonuses.

We do tend to mindlessly throw $5 here and $10 there, but with some of these mental hacks you can help yourself to spend less.

You can read the full article here, and find more ways to spend less.

You may also like to read about the supermarket secrets that get you to buy more: