Tame My Budget 7 : Test Your Strength

I like to share 3 very simple ways that could help you to kick start your money saving frenzy. I got the tips from Suze Orman through her page at Oprah.com which I think a very practical way to boost your habit into admitting that we too can handle our own financial state.

Of course, in order to take up this 3 steps, you have to be honest with yourself and try as you might. Not to give up too easily and trust that you can do them. Let me explain the 3 steps:

1) Choose any 1 day and try not to use any cash during the whole of that day

• Especially when we are a compulsive spender, we tend to buy things that we thought we going to need them, but end up we tend to regret the purchase.
• Try not to use cash 1 whole day require us to keep on questioning ourselves either we need to buy the thing or not.
• Since the practice is only 1 day, we have to quickly learn to postpone the purchase for another day. Sometimes postponing a purchase give time for us to actually realize that we do not really need to buy the thing at all.

2) Choose any 1 week and try not to use your credit card for the whole week

• Similar to step 1, this help you to question yourself from being a compulsive spender.
• It takes 1 week to catch on to the habit because when using credit card, we tend to spend more compare to use cash.
• Question and postpone all your potential purchase especially on those high value purchase from using credit card will help to harness your own habit not to quickly grab anything just through swiping your card.

3) Try not to eat out at restaurant for the whole month

• I guess this is the most hard thing to do, especially to do it for the whole month.
• Of course you can start to do in 2 weeks and gradually increase the habit for the whole month.
• This is specifically for those who have kitchen but usually decided to eat out because of millions of reason such as too busy, no time to cook, do not know how to cook, and so on.
• Learning to prepare meal at home will open up doors that unlock potential savings such as learning to shop for the cheapest raw food, finding good deal on frozen food or learning how to shop just enough to cover your meal.

For those who do not have kitchen and no way that you cannot eat out in restaurant, let me throw in some of my personal tips when dining out:

• Do not simply go to the most lavish restaurant. Go to the cheapest restaurant available.
• Plan your meal so that your total meal cost for 1 person will be less than $5.
• Avoid fast food at all cost since it is not nutritious, it do not give you as much energy as you need and it is ridiculously expensive compare to the quality of food they provided.

Give these 3 steps a try and learn to shape your lifestyle to a more manageable practice. With successfully implementing these 3 steps, you are in a comfortable way of changing your habit to be more money concern.