I am very lucky to have a chunk of disposable income every month. However, I want to invest and save most of it, because I recognize that disposable income can quickly disappear given the right circumstances.
My problem is a time old one, that I struggle with material desires, and how easy it is to treat it as play money.
Does anyone have any advice how to offset those impulses or otherwise make it easier in the moment to check myself?
Invest a portion of your disposable income automatically, and make “paying yourself” the first bill you pay. But make sure a portion of your disposable income is also fun money. That is what you can impulse spend, no questions asked. But when it’s gone, it’s gone. This whole process is just budgeting. You’re an adult and make reasonable money. You can be an adult with this too. You don’t have to trick yourself.
You're right. I think my biggest hangup is I spent most of my life, adult or otherwise, scraping by. So up until now my concept of budgeting would only include paying bills by nature. I guess I do need to just advance my approach to budgeting.
I hate to link back to Reddit, but the /r/personalfinance sidebar had great information. Especially the flow chart. Start there. Best of luck!
I have 4 different bank accounts that I use primarily (technically 10 total). What I do is split up my direct deposits and/or schedule transfers so that everything is bucketed. One account for fixed monthly bills, one for variable things like groceries, one for savings, and one for whatever I want, etc.
I put a little more than necessary in each account each month, so every so often I may have a surplus for a given bucket, too. This will either go towards the accelerated payoff of something or I'll split the difference and move half to my fun bucket.
For the most part, this keeps necessary money (bills and savings) out of sight or mind and it's easier to control my impulse spending when the only account I can/should be spending from has a low limited amount.
Pay yourself first to keep your disposable low. (Define your saving goals and set up automatic saving into another sav account or TFSA/rsp or us alternative) run these transfers the same schedule as your paycheck.
Also, if you tend to spend fast and loose, you may want to Set an amount of time you must waitbefore you can buy the thing depending on cost.
I.e 2 days for a $500 purchase. If you still want it after 5 days, buy it.
If you have those desires, it's probably because you're bored and want to alleviate the boredom. Helps to have hobbies that are cheap or free, and spend time doing them instead of thinking of things to buy. Also, odds are, a lot of your money is going to food and drinks out of the house. If you're enjoying time with friends, go for it, but try to keep track of what you're spending out of the house. A few meals and drinks here and there add up faster than making the occasional fun purchase.
This is in addition to the boring personal finance stuff, which you should also be doing.
