Simple Tips to Help You Stick To Your Budget

Creating and sticking to a budget is a lot of work. It’s a very mental game; you want to save money but you don’t want to live life wondering about every penny or feeling deprived. That’s why so many people fail when it comes to the budget. I know that when I’m trying to save more, I want to buy everything I see. When I choose a day to shop and splurge on myself, I come home with next to nothing. It’s all a mind game; I’m telling you. That’s why we have a few simple tips that will help you learn to get over this crazy mind game and create far better spending habits that work well with your budget.

Create Small Habits Every Month

There’s some dispute about the whole ’21 days to create a new habit’ deal, but we like it. That’s why we think that you should create a small new habit every month that helps you with a spending issue. For example, I will go to the store and buy a sub from the Publix sub shop even when I’m not starving (because Publix subs are amazing). I realized I’m spending $7 per trip every single time I go on just one sandwich even when I’m not hungry, and I go 4-5 times a week. If I were to change my habit slowly, by not buying a sub just once every week, that’d be $7 per week. That’s $364 in savings every year. One small habit at a time.

Reward Yourself

All week long you have stuck to your budget and done everything you were supposed to do. In fact, you are under budget and you’ve been rocking it like crazy. You go ahead and reward yourself. When you do something to celebrate your good behavior, you feel more inclined to want to continue the same behaviors. Keep it simple, within budget and not over-the-top and do it every week.

Cash it Out

We love to give ourselves a weekly allowance in this household for things like stopping for coffee and eating lunch out. My husband eats lunch out every day at work (I’m home working and with our twins, so not me) and we decided that it’s far less expensive for us to do this through the cash method. We only get cash once per week, so we have to be very careful what we buy. He’d spend $100 or more every week on lunch eating with clients and co-workers without even thinking about it in the past; the cash method makes him a bit more aware of what he is spending, and keeps us on track.

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