Spending money mindfully instead of blowing it out into the world is an art that not all of us have mastered. Many of us wish we were able to buy things more consciously, and we all have different reasons for it. Some of us want to save money to retire early while others aim to stop cluttering our homes with stuff we don’t need. Luckily, learning mindful spending habits that help us with intentional living and mindful consumption is fun, and we can easily integrate it into our everyday lives.

SHIFT YOUR MIND

: Easy Ways To Stop Wasting Money :

The way we think about money defines how we go about spending it. If we value it highly, we also think more carefully about what we spend it on and how much we are willing to pay. The good news is that we can all learn to change our spending habits by becoming aware of a view simple points.

:1. The Stick And The Carrot:

We all know the two ways to get a donkey to move forward. It works by either threatening it with a stick or by holding a tasty carrot in front of its muzzle.

Marketing and advertising work in the same way. It either plays off our fears (stick) or caters to our longings (carrot).

Ads are naturally designed in a way to quench our desire to belong. We are told that we need to look a certain way or own a particular thing to be liked, respected, or happy. Coincidentally, there is this one specific product right at our fingertips that’s the answer to all of our problems.

Advertisements jump at us from all directions, and they do it incessantly, day in, and day out. They are an everlasting stream of temptations, and it is up to us to resist.

We must learn to not pay attention to everything blocking our way with waving flags and blaring whistles.

If we can do that, we will be free to live independently and on our own terms. If we are unable to, we will forever be slaves to what other people want to sell us even when we neither want nor need it.

:2. Is This Really What YOU Want?:

We often don’t question the items we chase after or our motivation to do so. Parents, teachers, friends, or society tell us what’s normal, and what it is we should strive for.

But is that really what we want? Is it a dream we would have if nobody had told us about it in the first place, or would we not even waste a single thought on it?

What we all have in common regardless of what backgrounds welcome from is that we want others to like us for who we are and not for what we own. Consumerism won’t help us with that.

Will Rogers once said, “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like”, and there’s a whole lot of truth to that.

By becoming aware of this widespread habit, we can learn to stop wasting money on stuff we neither want nor need. In the process, we will also stop attracting the wrong kind of people who don’t like us for ourselves.

:3. How Much Lifetime Does It Cost?:

Most of us weigh up what we buy in the amount of money that we pay for it. That is a little too short-sighted, though, as we completely ignore another elementary aspect.

Assuming that money is the ultimate currency for payment is based on a common misconception. Buying something actually costs us much more than money – it costs us lifetime.

Money doesn’t materialize out of thin air – we make it appear by working for it. We exchange our lifetime in return, and by working out our hourly wage after (!) taxes, we can easily calculate how many hours of our life we need to invest for a specific item and its follow-up costs.

Let’s say we wanted to buy a house for 400.000 USD at an hourly net wage of 15.00 USD. It would cost us 13 whole years of our lives – and only if we worked full-time and had 0 living costs during that time which is obviously entirely unrealistic.

Subtracting 50% for realistic living expenses would put us at an equivalent of 26 years of life. And all this just to own a house when we could just as easily rent.

Isn’t that crazy? Looking at it this way, is it still worth it to us? Wouldn’t we rather spend our money differently and enjoy life just the same if not more?

:4. Things That Matter Will Find You:

Many of us buy things solely for fear of missing out. We feel like we need to get them because others have them, too, because we’re afraid we won’t ever find them again anywhere else, or because the predecessor is in no way as good as the latest version.

Fear, however, is a bad advisor when it comes to making decisions that correspond to our nature and values. Instead of buying things we truly need and enjoy using, we end up with stuff that merely clutters our home, just because we feel we should have it.

Instead, we should opt for a different approach and drop FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out) altogether. We can rest assured that things will find their way to us if they’re important and something we truly need.

People tend to talk about their experiences with items they enjoy having in their lives without us having to ask them to. Consequently, our friends, family, and colleagues will happily share information about the latest, coolest, and most helpful additions whenever it fits into a conversation we’re having with them.

Once they do, we grill them about the pros and cons without having to do extra research on them. And wouldn’t we much rather get first-hand experience reports than rely on the reviews of strangers that we’ve never met?

:5. Recognize Your True Needs:

We can easily recognize what we truly need by paying attention to what regularly annoys us in our everyday lives. Writing down anything that makes us go, “I wish this were different”, over a day can be quite eye-opening.

These are the situations that are worth looking deeper into as solving them will make us happier. Consequently, spending our money on them is a wise decision and worth doing.

Interestingly, these things are often quite affordable, and the joy they bring us is much bigger than the little cost attached to them.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Let me explain it with two examples.

I struggled with excruciating back pain for years that would get triggered even when I was only carrying as little as my purse, keys, smartphone, and notebook. I tried shoulder bags, backpacks, and crossbody bags to no avail until one day I stumbled over something called a thigh bag. I bought three in different sizes and colors and have never looked back. I can now carry all of the above-mentioned items as well as my ebook reader and a notebook on top for hours, and my back has never felt more relaxed and thankful.

Being a mom to a free-roam bunny comes with having to vacuum daily because hay magically makes its way through the entire apartment. And so I vacuumed. Daily. All the while tripping over the power chord, accidentally bumping the vacuum’s heavy body into walls, and constantly having to change dust bags. The day I finally invested in a chordless and bagless vacuum cleaner is one I wish had happened years earlier but what can I say? Some people have to narrowly escape a broken foot to finally wake up.

Sometimes it’s the little things that go a long way.

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You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.

Charles H. Spurgeon

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REACH YOUR GOAL

: How To Spend Money Wisely :

Now that we’ve set our mind on wanting to get better at managing our money, the closest solution is to optimize not necessarily how much we earn but how much we spend. While there are some cost positions none of us can avoid (such as rent or food), there are many that we do have control over. These include things that, if we are completely honest with ourselves, we know we don’t need. Fortunately, avoiding the urge to get them anyway, is easier than you might think.

:1. Unsubscribe From Newsletters:

Newsletters tend to mushroom all around us, and before we know it, we’ve accumulated an unhealthy amount of them in our inbox.

This is negative in two ways. Firstly, we have to scroll through numerous emails. Secondly, we always have a bad feeling about it. Either because we delete them without having read them or because we read them but waste an incredible amount of time doing so.

The solution to this is simple: We make time for ourselves and actively unsubscribe from all our newsletters.

Doing this once took me an entire Sunday afternoon, but it was worth every minute. I let my favorite series run alongside and enjoyed my favorite tea while sorting through all of my emails.

The best way to go about it is to search for the terms “newsletter” and “unsubscribe” either separately or in combination. Our email programs will then list most of the newsletters we are subscribed to (provided they still exist in our mailbox and we haven’t deleted them all).

Once our mailbox is tidied up, we will never again face unnecessary temptation – and what a breath of fresh air (and content calmness) that will be.

:2. Avoid Ads On TV And Radio:

Avoiding ads can be tricky, but it is all the more rewarding if we succeed. Thankfully, just because they’re everywhere doesn’t mean we have to pay attention to them.

The most extreme solution to avoid ads on TV is throwing out the TV altogether. Besides not being bombarded with unwanted advertisements and therefore reducing our desire to buy stuff we don’t need, it also frees up an incredible amount of time we would normally spend mindlessly watching TV programs that often don’t even cater to our interests.

Other options include canceling our cable TV contract in favor of subscribing to streaming services. Not only are they usually ad-free, but they also let us set our schedule and set us free from predefined airtimes.

And if that isn’t an option, we can always get up and spend the commercial break crossing things off our to-do list. Anything that can be done within approximately five minutes is predestined for this. Filling the washing machine, unloading the dishwasher, taking out the trash, speed-vacuuming the bedroom – you get the idea.

Commercial breaks on the radio are usually shorter than the ones on TV and a little harder to plan. Our best bet would be to either choose regular stations that are not financed by advertising (yes, they do exist) or opt for one of the numerous free online radio stations out there. Alternatively, we can also create our playlists via YouTube, Spotify, and the like.

:3. Create A Wishlist And Wait It Out:

Purchasing decisions that we make spontaneously often turn out too rushed in the medium or long term.

If we then lose the receipt or miss the return deadline, we’re stuck with something that, in the worst case, annoys us whenever we see it.

A simple and fun solution to this problem is to create wish lists and put anything that catches our eye on it instead of buying it straight away.

The list can be an Amazon shopping list, a digital note on our computer, or a Post-it on the fridge. Or maybe it’s an entire folder in which we store all the great things we’ve taken pictures of along the way.

Regardless of what the list looks like, we don’t need to worry about forgetting anything, since we’ve made a note of it.

Then we sleep on it, ideally for more than one night, and we will notice that the buying impulse decreases.

After x days, weeks, or months, we will look through our list and realize that we don’t even want half of the items anymore and are often even glad we didn’t buy them in the first place.

:4. Try Before You Buy:

Many items can be tried out elsewhere without us necessarily having to buy them first. This is especially helpful if we’re thinking about getting something we have no prior experience with.

What happens if we buy something and then realize after a while that we don’t like it as much as we originally thought we would?

The mini trampoline in the living room is not used by anyone and only serves as a painful toe stopper. The guitar our youngest asked for for months is slowly but surely gathering dust in a corner. The acrylic paint tube collection we initially collected to live out our creative streak has long since dried.

And since we bought it, it now stares at us reproachfully every time we tiptoe around it or stumble over it as soon as we open our closet.

A much better approach would be to ask friends, family, and coworkers if they own the item in question and whether we may borrow it for a weekend or two just to see if it’s what we expect it to be. This works perfectly for hobby or sports equipment, musical instruments, and possibly even for specific tools and machinery.

If it turns out to be exactly what we hoped for, we can then go ahead and buy our own. And if it doesn’t, we can state without regret that it’s not our thing after all and move on without having wasted money or cluttered our homes.

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