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News & Features Finance Why Cutting Back On Your Lattes Won’t Help Your Finances

Why Cutting Back On Your Lattes Won’t Help Your Finances

Written by Laura Leigh Clarke on Monday, 20 August 2012 23:03
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Maybe you know you’re spending too much each month. Maybe you’re on a financial treadmill and don’t know how to get off? Perhaps you’ve tried to cut back on the number of lattes you buy, or the little things you spend on in order to make some savings... making yourself just a bit more miserable and no less broke in the process…

And perhaps despite your best efforts you come to the conclusion that no matter how much you try and how much will power you have, you still manage to end up right back where you started.

How to Save Money Without Cutting Back On the Stuff You Love

Let’s face it; unless you’re a certain personality type (Lord or Accumulator profile in the Money Genius Matrix), self-denial, abstinence and willpower when it comes to how you spend your money are never going to be effective strategies to hanging onto your hard earned cash...

The problem with cutting back and trying to economize is that it sets up the habit of limitation.

1.    It deactivates your natural money genius, and focuses you on the fear instead of what you love doing
2.    It makes you feel limited – these feelings of limitation increase, and then creating more limitation in your experience
3.    Feelings of limitation get generalized – so instead of just feeling limited about what you spend, you’ll limit yourself on what you’ll show up for, and the opportunities you’ll pursue
4.    It stops you investing in things that are going to make you money
5.    It stops you recognizing and acting on opportunities and your natural money intuition. You can’t be intuitive if you’re wrapped up in fear.

So cutting back on the things that are important to you is clearly not the answer to your money frustrations. So what do you do?

Discover Precisely What You Should be Spending Your Money On in Order to Have More Left at the End of Each Month

The key to turning this all around is to focus on the things you love and genuinely make you happy… not the things that you think you ought to buy, or that give you a temporary fix.
This way you increase your happiness, your quality of life, and strangely, you stop over spending. You see, a lot of the times we overspend trying to fill a gap, simply because we are unhappy. By spending time, money and energy on the things you love, you actively increase your level of contentment and naturally stop over spending.
One of my money hero’s Ramit Sethi says:
“Spend lavishly on the things you love, and stingily on the things you don’t care about” Ramit Sethi, Author I Will Teach You To Be Rich

For example, if you’re not into clothes and labels, but you love horse riding, then allow yourself to feel comfortable spending your disposable income on horse riding. If you don’t care about clothes, buy them cheaply from supermarket and low price clothing stores.
If you love fashion but you don’t care about haute cuisine – make your life easy, and cook simple and healthy food, and allow yourself to buy those one or two more expensive clothes items when you have the cash.

Please note: this not an excuse to run up credit card debt or spend money you don’t have. What we are talking about here is allocation of resources, and disposable income. Be smart!
So there you have it – the five reasons you shouldn’t cut your spending, and how to work out precisely what you should be spending your money on, so you have more left over each month.

Just two things to take action on right now:
Thing 1: identify the things that are important to you, and work out how much you can afford to spend on those things each month or quarter.
Thing 2: write a list of all the things that you don’t really care about, but have to, or have been spending money on... then stop! Cancel the magazine subscriptions you never read. Cancel the membership site you never log onto. Stop buying things that aren’t aligned with your true self and what really lights you up. Get real with yourself and recognise if you’re just trying to plug an emotional gap, or to feel differently.

Just doing these two things, you’ll notice a huge difference in your bank balance in a very short time!

Guaranteed.

Comments below, peeps...  Let me know how you get on. I read every comment.

To your success!
LLC  :)

Laura Leigh Clarke

Laura Leigh Clarke

Laura Leigh Clarke is a leading Business Coach who helps people effortlessly grow their businesses, manage their finances and reach their full potential. She is a respected trainer, inspirational speaker and soon to be published author. Her book ‘Wire yourself for Wealth’ is available from 5th July.

www.wireyourselfforwealth.com 

comments  

 
0 # Hannah Reilly 2012-08-22 16:36
The notion of cutting back on luxury has always been a depressive state of affairs for me, particularly being a woman, we like nice things! This puts money management into perspective, will pick up the book rec too - really sound advice here, thanks
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