Don’t have money? Change these 4 habits

Bad habits are nasty. It takes a lot of patience and will power to get over our bad habits and replace with good habits. We all have our weaknesses. While some people have a sweet tooth, others like to smoke and drink. Although the money we spent on all these things may not look much, if we look from the long term perspective, the number is staggering. We will have more money in our wallet if we change these four bad money habits.

Here are the four top bad money habits:

Drinking alcohol

This has to be the number one money draining habit. Many of us love to drink. Hardly any get together passes by without alcohol. While drinking in moderate amounts may not be bad for health, but drinking regularly may be harmful to your pocket.

Let us take an example to illustrate the point.

Let us assume that you grab a beer with your colleagues during the midweek, go to a club every Friday night and maybe go out on a date on Sunday evening. We tell ourselves that we are just going to have one pint or just small peg. What happens, in reality, is that a tiny peg becomes two medium. If you want to drink, be mindful of the expenses and set a target amount for yourself. E.g., you can set the maximum limit at Rs.2,000 per month. And, once you exceed this amount, let your friends know that you don’t have money to spend on alcohol. Although it may make you look unpopular, your future self will thank you for that.

Smoking

Smoking is one of the most addictive things on Earth. And once you are hooked, cutting back on cigarettes is ‘the most difficult’ thing to do. We may like to think that we are not spending a lot of money on cigarettes but let us do the math. Assuming that the price of one cigarette is Rs. 15 and you smoke five cigarettes in a day, the total amount of money that you spend on a month would be Rs.2,250. Instead of blowing up the money, if you had invested the same amount in a recurring account, the amount of money would have grown to more than Rs.89,000(@6.5%) in three years. This amount will be sufficient for a nice long holiday in a hill station.

Eating out every day

For many people eating out every day is not a luxury but a necessity. We understand that cooking every day when you are staying alone in a big city with a demanding job can be a daunting task. However, there are many options available. You can prep your meals on weekends or whenever you are little less time constrained. There are tiffin services that you can opt. The easiest option would be to take the services of a cooking lady.

If none of these options is applicable, then falling in love with cooking can help you from having a hole in your pocket. Know the basics of food, and if you need any help the internet, your mom or your flatmates will be there to help you out. Cooking is a beautiful art, and you can apply all your creativity in it. It also has therapeutic and meditative effects. To start, you can try cooking just one meal in a day for a week.

Shopping randomly

We all have heard the word ‘retail therapy’ which means making oneself feel good through shopping. But what we don’t that it is just a temporary thing and you will end up in the same state by the time you reach home. The initial excitement will vanish and maybe seeing the current balance in your savings account will make you more upset.
Many times, we go to a shopping mall on weekends because we have nothing to do. Although we didn’t have any plans to buy anything, we are not able to resist buying some of the things that are on display. The best way to curb random shopping is not heading towards the mall unless you need to buy something. After selecting a product, ask yourself whether you need to purchase the product and what’s its importance. If you can satisfactorily answer these questions, you can go ahead and buy it or else you know what to do. Also, while going to a shopping mall, jot down the things that you need to buy and stick to your list.

These habits may seem harmless, but one needs to remember that even small holes have the power to sink a big ship.