Are You Sabotaging Your Frugal Life?

Last week I wrote about my former colleague and friend Alice and recommendations to make being frugal a lot easier.  In particular, I looked at changing elements in the environment to make it less tempting to spend money, more conducive to saving, and generally surrounding yourself with support rather than antagonists.  Well, I got a call from a mutual friend of mine and Alice’s, Brenda, who read the post and commented that she tries to implement things like that (and to remove food temptations as well), but always found herself giving in to impulses to shop, making that charge on the credit card, and buying that box of cookies for the cabinet.  Brenda, who by profession is a lawyer, and quite successful at that, believes that she deliberately does these things so that she will have an excuse as and when things don’t turn out perfectly.

Not being a psychologist, I don’t feel qualified analyzing Brenda’s behavior or offering any professional suggestions.  I do notice that I have exhibited similar behavior in the past and have found the following useful:

–Be kind to yourself if you slip up — I find a lot of people, including Brenda, will rationalize, when on a vacation trip, I’ve already over spent my credit card, so I might as well go whole hog.  Same with the food, as in, I broke the diet rules and had second helpings so I might as well have cake and ice cream too.  These episodes are usually followed up by immense guilt.  I’ve found it easier to say, well I overspent the restaurant budget for this outing, so no point ruminating about this for weeks, I’ll forgive myself and continue with the generally frugal behavior.

–Look for compensatory actions — If I overspend the restaurant budget, I tell myself that I should then look for other areas to save more or postpone other purchases.  For those using the cash budget method (I don’t) this is easier by having no more cash for other purchases.  If you work a flexible schedule, one of the best things is to sign up for more hours.  Not only does this help you to raise the income side, it helps to put you in the driver’s seat.  If you don’t have the ability to work more hours, look for other ways to earn the overspent money back, such as through e-Bay or Craigs list sales.

–Make as many healthy, positive actions as automatic as possible– as mentioned in the previous post, this isn’t really an issue of willpower.  Automate the savings, put limits on the credit cards (or use cash), automate the retirement investing, and remove the temptations from immediate view.

--Finally, save or invest toward specific positive goals — it helped me to stay focused when I worked in the corporate world to know that I was saving for early retirement from the industry and toward a more flexible lifestyle.  Similar positive goals, such as a new house or a child’s education, can bring a focus to general life planning.

posted at this week’s Festival of Frugality