What are the top ways to ditch bad spending habits?
We all know how hard it is to ditch bad habits, and how easy it is to develop them, right? Whether, we are thinking of smoking, overeating or eating unhealthy food, or in this case of unnecessary spending money. For some reason, it seems much easier to develop a bad habit, than a good one like exercising often and eating healthy food for example. Why is that? The problem with bad habits is that you are having your “reward” immediately upon acting, and when it comes to good habits, a reward usually comes afterwards. For example, some people really do not enjoy during the exhausting workout, and the pleasure only comes after. And if you grab your favorite burger to eat, you are happy and having pleasure as soon as you take the first bite; the same is happening with the first smoke you take, and buying something unplanned that has caught your attention at the moment. And the bad consequences come later. Sometimes those consequences are not that bad, and the brain only has positive impulse when we see a burger, or a pack of cigarettes – the pleasure of taking one or another. And that’s why it is so easy to develop bad habits, and hard to resist them. We are all humans after all, right?
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Oh well, saying “we are all humans” is often times just an excuse for not dealing with your problems, and not being strong enough. There are so many examples of people turning their lives completely, making transformations that are hard to believe. Changing “impossible” to “possible”. And that happens when we are persistent enough and make our brain connect good things to pleasure too, even though pleasure in good habits comes after some effort. More about this topic about reshaping your existing habits, transforming them, and substituting them with some good habit you can learn in the book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.
Often, the problem is unawareness. People are usually not aware of many of their bad habits, but only of the obvious ones, like smoking for example. And it is interesting to know that bad habits usually come in pairs. So, instead of first trying to deal with the worst habit you have, start transforming the one that is easier to give up. You can find some examples of unaware habits in our other article – 7 habits that kill your productivity.
Now, let’s see what tricks for avoiding irrational money spending we have prepared for you, consulting with similar lists from US News, and Save up to name a few. Let’s take a look at the countdown of our top 5 ways to ditch bad spending habits.
