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How to Avoid Spending Money When You’re Trying to Cut Back On Spending

Have you ever wondered how to avoid spending money when you are trying to save but fail miserably? I honestly HATE when that happens. 

You know how it is, payday comes and you create your budget like the responsible adult that you are. Once you’ve sorted out your expenses you declare to your family that we will be cutting back on unnecessary spending. You feel like a champ! Nothing can derail your plans this month. Last month may have ended in shambles but this month will be different. 

I am going to share with you 3 ways to help you avoid spending when you don’t want to.

How to Avoid Spending Money When You’re Trying to Save

Picture it: you decide to check your email and something catches your eye. What do you see? A 50% off sale from that brand you’ve been eyeing forever! But wait, you said no spending for the month. Clothes are necessary right? You can’t walk around naked, that’s almost ILLEGAL!

Familiar with this scenario? This used to be a huge temptation for me. Luckily I learned how to avoid this trap. Want to know how? Simply unsubscribe from email lists that will tempt you to shop. 

The details:

  1. Open an email from any company that tempts you to spend.
  2. Find the UNSUBSCRIBE button
  3. If they hit you with the question ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE, click YES, UNSUBSCRIBE
  4. Watch your bank account remain in the green

 

That’s just one way to avoid spending, eliminating email triggers. But what about when you are on the internet? This brings us to scenario #2 

You decide to open up your browser to get some work done. Maybe you need to add something quickly to your Amazon Subscribe and Save list before the deadline. Or maybe you need to respond to a very important email. Either way, you went on to do something productive but now you haven’t the slightest idea how you have 5 things in your cart and are about to check out on your favorite shopping site. 

 

How do we avoid this? BLOCK THE SITE.

I confess I didn’t know that I could block a site until recently. It’s awesome. You can choose to block the website temporarily or rip the bandaid off and block it altogether.

 

There’s still one more method to help you avoid unnecessary spending and my 8-year-old daughter had to learn this lesson recently.

Our kids recently started collecting an allowance, not for good behavior or chores but simply for the sake of learning to handle money. Her triggers are food and movies- definitely her mother’s child. 

Normally when she sees a movie she would like to watch, she would ask us and we would think it over, check our GENERAL budget, and see if we can afford it. Now we simply tell her yes, as long as she pays for it. That tends to stop her right in her tracks. Sadly, this didn’t work last week.

 I realized that even though she had the allowance to spend, I didn’t want to encourage her to spend frivolously so I shared my Amazon plan with her. What exactly is my Amazon plan? Well, I will tell you.

THE AMAZON PLAN

If I am on Amazon intentionally shopping for my household and something catches my eye, I must do this:

  1. place it in my shopping cart if my allowance can afford it
  2. In 7 days, return to the cart and then decide if I still want to purchase it. 
  3. If I still want to buy it, do more research. Is there anything else that could be better? Would I actually use it?
  4. If I still want this item AND I haven’t blown my allowance, then I will buy it

This plan has worked wonders and it’s also racked up hundreds of items in my SAVE FOR LATER section on Amazon. Hopefully, Amazon doesn’t put a limit on the feature. 

Was she happy about the plan? Nope! Did she stick to it? Yup, so much so that she reminded me every day how many days were left until she would buy her movie! Lol.

That’s the third way to avoid spending, delay the purchase by at least a week. 

Those are the three ways I have curbed my unnecessary spending:

  1. Unsubscribe from emails from shopping websites
  2. Block websites
  3. The Amazon Plan (delaying your purchases for a least a week)

I’m sure these tips will help you answer the question of how to avoid spending money. What are some other ways that you avoid spending? Let me know!