Skip to footer

Curb your spending cravings

We all indulge in something–books, coffee, shoes, dessert. We crave these things. Giving into these cravings, however, can be pricey and disturb your financial progress. Here are some simple tips to help you curb your spending cravings. 

|
Mary Knox Merrill/The Christian Science Monitor/File
Candy on display at Haven's Candies in Westbrook Maine. Hamm offers tips on how to curb your cravings to help save you money.
  • By Trent Hamm Guest blogger

You want it. You can’t stop thinking about it. You must have it.

You keep visiting websites about it. You find it for sale online and your finger hovers over the button. You see it in a store and you almost can’t tear yourself away from picking it up and holding it in your hands.

Whatever that item is, you crave it. You want it so bad you can almost taste it. 

However, giving into that craving without planning ahead for it is a sure way to disrupt your plans and your budget and your positive financial progress.

For me, the craving often revolves around books. I want to read the latest bestsellers. I want to take some of my most-loved and most-thought-provoking books and actually annotate the pages, almost as if they were a journal. I want to read and re-read books that I love and share them with friends.

I recognize the craving for what it is. It’s just a strong desire for something I don’t really need that, if I’m not careful, can grow out of control and cause me to toss aside sensible financial principles.

You might crave something else. Maybe it’s video games. Maybe it’s clothing. Maybe it’s fine wines. Maybe it’s craft beer. Maybe it’s hunting gear. I know people who crave all of those things.

Whatever that material item is that you crave, it’s a potential danger to your personal finances if you let it go unchecked. Thankfully, there are several steps you can take to curb that craving.

Don’t shop recreationally. Don’t go into a store without a specific purchase in mind that you’ve already considered carefully and researched. Pick the item you want, buy it, and get out of there.

Stores are designed from the bottom up to encourage product desire and encourage you to buy things that you shouldn’t. Recreational shopping amounts to begging the stores to take money from you for things you don’t want. Just avoid it.

Don’t watch television without a specific program in mind. Sure, there’s ads, but the problem is actually in the programs themselves. Almost every program on television is laden with product placement, from the beverage someone is drinking in a sitcom to the logos all over the place on sports programming. It’s all there to remind you of products and keep them in your head.

Don’t web browse without a specific purpose. Again, the ads are the obvious part, but there are so many “stories,” particularly on news sites, that amount to little more than advertisements for a product. They glow about the latest gadget or the latest food product and make it sound like anyone who’s anyone must have it. Keep your web browsing to a specific purpose and minimize this junk.

Seek out entertainment that doesn’t involve material possessions. Go to free concerts. Get involved in charities. Read books or watch movies from the library. Host dinner parties for your friends. Practice meditation or prayer. Dig deep into exercise.

All of these hobbies and activities are enjoyed without having to have “stuff.” The more you can do without “stuff” being a requirement, the less you’ll desire it.

The post The “Craving” and How to Curb It appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Curb your spending cravings
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple-Dollar/2013/1028/Curb-your-spending-cravings
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe