Two of my credit card bills just came in today. Boy, What a shocker. I have spent over $7550 just last month. I have about $1200 disposable income each month. So I was about $6350 short. Yikes. When I looked at the amount , it gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Recently I have started realizing that I have a spending problem( At least I was starting to acknowledge it , and have moved away from the delusional view that I make more than I spend in a month). I believe, as in any addiction, admitting to yourself that you have an addiction is the first step.
Being a very analytical person ( for all the help it did for me from being a victim of the addiction in the first place ) , I decided I am going to analyze my last month’s spending or at least the credit card spending. I don’t carry much cash .
I created an excel expense spread sheet, and categorized each expense . I spent close to $5000 dollars on furniture and house related items, close to $400 on gifts, and close to $700 on charity draws. I really didn’t have any pressing need to spend on any of these items. At that time I had justified the spending as things that brings me happiness or will bring happiness to others.
So today I have decided to take a journey to control my spending. There are probably millions of articles on the internet with some tips for controlling spending (Google returned 99.5 million results). You should read some of them, at the end of the day however, whatever plan you come up with , should be tailored for your personality , and to help fix your bad habits with regard to money.
I am going to share mine, in the hope that it might inspire someone with a similar problem to do something about their addiction.
Here it goes :
1. As you saw from above, one of the things I spend the most money on was household items/ improvements, and these were improvements that were not needed. The question now is , how am I going to control this spending. I am going to go cold turkey. There are no pressing repairs needed or items needed for the house at the moment. For the next 6 months, I will not purchase anything for the house. I am taking an oath today.
2. The second highest item on my list was charity lottos. I am going to apply the same strategy here, and will not buy any more lotto tickets till next September.
3. The hardest item for me to tackle would be gifts. I have always really enjoyed giving people gifts. Over the next 6 months, I am going to try to minimize the monetary gifts I would be giving my family and friends. For the gifts I must , I will try to use the gift cards I have.
These are my 3 action items to help control my spending. After three months , I am going to evaluate where I am, and tackle the rest of the type of spending on my credit card. Wish me luck!
Credit Card Debt, Personal FinanceLabels: Credit card debt, debt handling, fix credit card debt, fix debt issues, managing money, Personal Finance