Ask HN: How to break the habit of bad financial management?
I am not sure exactly what bad financial management means to you, but to me it means a habit of impulse buying, so I&#x27;ll focus on that here. This is always something I have struggled with, and it has required constant maintenance over the years. I have never been in a ton of debt purely because of my own anxiety about my spending habits. I didn&#x27;t get a credit card until I was 30 for the same reason, knowing it was probably not a good idea for me. I now have a credit card for flight points and pay it off in full each month.<p>I still slip up _a lot_, but I do manage to save ~40-50% of my income most months. Here are some things that helped me keep my own impulse buying habits in check:<p>* When I want to buy something expensive, make up a challenge to &quot;earn&quot; that thing and prove that I will actually use it. Before I got a Kenwood mixer, I set a goal to make 100 pies (or other baked goods that would otherwise use a mixer) by hand. I think I got to about 50 over the course of two years before a good deal popped up on a mixer and I went ahead and got it. I did not make it to my 100-pie goal, but I felt I had proven to myself enough that I would use the thing and went for it.<p>* In the meantime, imagine what else you could buy with that same amount of money. &quot;That $1000 mixer is a whole vacation! Imagine how much cat food I could get with that $1000! That could pay for an entire wardrobe!&quot; &quot;If I throw this in a low cost index fund I could have $x in a few years!&quot;<p>It doesn&#x27;t really matter what the things I come up with are, just coming up with what _else_ I could use that money for makes me reconsider if this mixer is really the top priority for me right now.<p>* Order of money operations. As soon as I get paid, I first pay my rent, then my card bill, then put everything else into savings (or funds) and leave maybe $100- $500 each month in my checking account for any small emergencies (eg a place doesn&#x27;t take my credit card or something)<p>* If the impulse buy instinct flares up and I just really want something way too expensive on a whim, sometimes I let myself buy something _small_ instead. I want this extra nice pricey desk lamp? Budget for it over the next two months, and in the meantime buy a considerably less expensive new kitchen utensil or coffee beans or something. &quot;Buy stuff to avoid buying other stuff&quot; is not an ideal strategy, of course, but sometimes it helps in a pinch.<p>* Open up your portfolio report and see how well your index funds are doing. This encourages me to maybe throw more of that money I was about to spend into funds instead.<p>* Set a limit of how much I allow myself to spend on my card each month after paying the bills. I am currently struggling with this one. I managed to avoid lifestyle inflation for a year, but the last few months I&#x27;ve been spending more than my intended amount and it is causing some anxiety. Which leads me to:<p>* Keep an eye on your own stress levels and mindset. I go through periods of doing really well and really badly with my spending. Some months I just buy random crap I do NOT need. This is one of those months. Yesterday I ordered a YoYo because I thought it might be relaxing and I liked playing with a YoYo as a kid. Why?! I KNOW this YoYo will probably sit in a drawer somewhere. But I want to _try_. So right now I _know_ I am in one of those spending modes and need to be more careful. At the same time, my financial anxiety flares up at these times because I know I&#x27;m doing badly. I&#x27;m now starting to set mini-goals for myself: &quot;Don&#x27;t spend anything for the next 3 days&quot;, or &quot;Buy only groceries for the entire week&quot;, or &quot;Only one takeout coffee per week this month&quot;. It does not always work and it&#x27;s always a struggle, but sometimes it helps kick me out of the impulse buy loop.<p>Things I&#x27;ve tried that did not work for me:<p>* YNAB. I tried it three times. I know many people _love_ this and I think it is worth trying for those who haven&#x27;t yet, but for me it just did not work. Too much manual upkeep. Over the long term, setting an overall number limit on my card for me to keep in mind for the month instead of trying to break the spending down into categories has been more effective for me (although as you can see above it isn&#x27;t foolproof).<p>* Spreadsheet tracking and other forms of more granular budgeting. I can never stick with it and it ends up just making me feel worse because I&#x27;m not keeping up with the granular reporting.