The most useful thing I did was to take a close look at what we spend on - it took a while to plot it out but if you can plug a year’s expenditure in a spreadsheet it can be quite an eye opener. It’s so useful to know when big bills come up, where the pinch points are, and move some of those around to spread the load.
That helped me identify overspending vs high expenditure. I was fuzzy on this - I’d feel vaguely guilty about things I actually didn’t have a lot of choice over, and then slip into a hopeless “ah fuck it anyway” mentality for other things.
When I got granular about what I was actually overspending on, I was able to identify my specific triggers and put some steps in place to tackle the triggers. Don’t get caught into shame with this because that’s just a waste of energy. We all have some pitfalls and it’s just useful to know what they are and put strategies in place to avoid them. How useful budgeting tips are will vary depending on these - something that’s brilliant for one person can be the High Road to Ruin for another.
It’s also incredibly useful to know what really matters to you, what things make life worth living. When you know what they are, you can prioritise those things. In fact it’s really important. It’s also much easier to do without things when you realise that they don’t actually matter as much to you.
Vast amount of money, time, research and effort goes into convincing us to spend money. It’s actually quite fascinating to research and so, so, helpful to recognise the effects at work in your own life. It’s quite a weird thing to realise that you’ve been conditioned to think you want something, but when you pause to think about it, don’t actually care about it very much.
We also habituate very quickly, so if you buy a fancy coffee everyday it’s just a meh experience. But if you make your own, and buy a coffee once a month, it’s a luxury experience. It’s not actually possible to experience luxury as routine - and we’re denying ourselves exquisite pleasures when we try.
A game changing rule for me is that I have to save up for any big or unusual purchases. There are no impulse purchases anymore. It gives me time to think, to consider other options, to find better deals, or better quality. I find I often change my mind about things that felt so compelling initially. I’m shit at prioritising in the moment so I don’t - I give myself time to clear my head. It’s funny how you can really, really want something enough to go into credit, but not want something enough to do without for a little while!