Life Improvement Tips For The Wise Few

Learning how to keep your money in your pocket and only buy what you really need is the best way to manage your money. Many of us have the tendency to buy something the first time around, but that is a very bad habit, that you will need to break. You can read my article on how to break bad habits that will help you loose that type of behavior.

Most of the time we buy items we seldom need or use, I think it’s a human behavior that acts like magnet that pulls us to buy without even knowing why. Most of the time we buy an item we are highly excited about at that moment, then a couple weeks goes by and we hardly notice what we bought, a couple months down the road and we can’t even recall what we bought.

A well know method for controlling your urge for buying is called delayed gratification. It is a method that you should also use before you jump and purchase something. The method is very simple and works as follow: When you see something that you want, don’t jump and buy it right away, just tell yourself that I will come back and buy it later. Stay away for a week or two and return to review what you wanted to buy. You will notice that your excitement has faded and your not interested in buying that item anymore.

By doing this, you will teach yourself how to not buy on impulse. You will learn how to spend your money wisely and only buy items that you really need. You will learn how to manage your money much better and control your bad spending habits. Wise spending is as simple as not jumping the gun and buying each and everything you see.
A good example of bad spending can be seen every end of the month when we get our pay or during the Holidays when we get a little bonus. People tend to buy stuff they seldom need. Many of you go out and buy gym equipment (yes, guys it isn’t easy to train at home) only to realize that after the first month or two, your newly bought equipment only catches dust and never gets used again.

It is much cheaper to just go to the gym for a couple of months and then quit when you feel like you had enough, the cost is much lower, and you won’t have to keep looking at that new piece of gym equipment that you just can’t fit into your lazy routine.

Another good example is the purchase of clothing and shoes. Count the amount of pieces clothing that you have lying around that you no longer wear and picture the shoes you have bought that also never get worn (sorry ladies that one fits up your alley). I do believe that these bad practices can be controlled, if we would really use the delayed gratification principle.

As the season approaches, I do hope many of you would actually plan your purchases and control your spending. It is much better to have some money after the season passes, than to go through the season flat broke.

Put aside a little money and save it away for after the Holiday season, or save a little this month and next month. That will be your way of making sure that when the season hype blows off, you will still have a little cash.

I know many people who blows every cent during the Holiday season and end up taking a loan or begging a friend to lend them some money to survive the worse month of the year. January is the hardest and toughest time of the year, because many spend more than they earn during the month of December.

Wise spending consist of learning to manage your money and stop begging people to help you out. If you keep lending money from people all your life will bring you is people lending back money from you. It is the poor people syndrome. All they do is lend from each other, it is a vicious circle where lending just goes around and around. It gets so bad at one moment that they lend from one person to repay another. Don’t join that never ending lending tree. If your part of that consider yourself poor, and if you wish to break free repay what you have loaned from others, and break that bad habit. Be on the giving side, that way your life will be rewarded for helping others. But only give what you can afford.

Learn to live within your means, save ten percent of what you earn each month before you pay your bills and, spend what you can afford and only buy what you need.