1. Attitudes learnt in childhood
Financial attitudes are absorbed just like family traditions. We observe them in adult relatives and adopt them. You probably cook a dish exactly like your grandmother and use expressions that your parents often say. We aren’t taught the basics of personal finance in school, so as we get older, we start handling money the way we learnt as children.
But your parents may have been wrong, or their approach just isn’t fit for your purposes. So it’s useful to analyse what you’ve learned from them.
Evaluate your current financial habits: how much you save, whether you have debts, whether you budget and stay within it. Try to remember when and why you started these habits.
Think about which ones you would like to change and how you can do it. For example, make a weekly budget rather than a monthly budget to make it easier to stay within it. Or give up certain activities to save for an important purchase. Find methods you can implement today to start making life changes.
2- Emotions
They often drive our financial decisions. For example, when we’re stressed and in a bad mood, we want to buy something to please ourselves, and at sales we often rake through unnecessary items for fear of missing out on a bargain. But the emotions pass and we are left with an empty wallet.
Do not rely on willpower. It is better to create for yourself such conditions in which saving and reducing spending will be given easily.
Set up an automatic transfer of part of the money to the savings account on the day of payday. This way you won’t even have to think about whether to save or not.
Don’t pay with a credit card if you can’t pay back the purchase within the next few days.
When you go shopping for specific items, take only the amount of money you need so you don’t buy anything extra.
You don’t have to give up on spontaneous purchases completely, just know how much you can budget for them and help protect yourself from emotional spending.
