Do you always spend your paycheck or compensation as soon as you receive it? Once you start spending money, it may be hard to stop. However, overspending can leave you with thousands of debts and no savings. Stopping spending money can be challenging, but it’s possible to stop and start saving with the right approach.

Review your expenses during the last quarter (three months). Check your credit card, including the bank statements and cash expenses, to know where your money is going. Take note of even little things like coffee, a postage stamp, or takeout.

You may be surprised about how much money you spend in just one week or one month.

If possible, look for data that you have collected over a year. Most financial advisors review a full year’s expenses before giving you recommendations.

Discretionary expenses can represent a large percentage of your paycheck or compensation. You can know what you can cut your expenses on by registering them.

Take note of how much you spend on what you want and need (for example, drinks at a bar and food for the week).

Find out what percentage of your expenses are fixed and discretionary. Fixed costs are the same each month, while discretionary costs are flexible.

Save your receipts. This is a great way to track how much you spend on certain items daily. Instead of throwing your receipts away, save them so you can record exactly how much money you spend on an item or meal. That way, if you end up overspending in a month, you’ll be able to pinpoint precisely when and where you spent that money.

Ask yourself: How do I spend more than I earn? If you are using all your savings to pay rent each month or using your credit card to pay for your shopping expenses each month, you are spending more than you earn. So the only thing you will do is end up with large debts and fewer savings. Therefore, be honest with your monthly expenses and spend as much as you earn. This means that you must divide the money into costs and savings every month.

You can also use your budget app to track your spending daily. Download the budget app on your phone and register your purchases immediately after making them

Eat at home and bring your lunch. Eating out can be so expensive, especially if you spend $10 or $15 a day, 3 or 4 times a week. Limit the times you eat to once a week and then gradually to once a month. You have to realize how much money you save when buying food and cooking for yourself. You will also appreciate a delicious meal away from home on a special occasion.

Take your lunch to work, rather than paying money for it. Take about 10 minutes a day before you go to bed or in the morning before work to make a sandwich or snack. This way, you will see that you save a little more money each week just by bringing your lunch.

Take a test to limit your expenses. Test your spending habits by buying only what you need for 30 days or a month. See how little you can spend in a month buying things you need instead of things you want.

This way, you can determine what you consider a necessity and what you consider a pleasure. Beyond the obvious necessities like rent or food, you might find that a gym membership is necessary because it keeps you fit and makes you feel good, or a weekly massage because it helps with back pain. As long as these needs are within your budget and you can afford them, you can spend money on them.

Do it all by yourself. It’s a great thing to learn new skills and save money. Many DIY blogs allow you to recreate expensive items on a budget. Instead of spending on an expensive piece of art or decorative object, do it yourself. So you can create a custom object and stay within your budget.

Websites like Pinterest, iMujer, and Oh! Crafts have great ideas for things you can do yourself for household items. You can also learn to recycle items you already have and make something new out of them instead of spending money on a new item.

Try to do household chores and activities by yourself. Do your landscaping instead of paying someone else to do it for you. Get the whole family involved in chores around the house, like mowing the lawn or cleaning the pool.

Make your beauty products and household cleaning supplies. Most of these products are made from basic items that you can buy at your local store. Laundry detergent, multi-purpose cleaner, and even soap can be made by hand for less money than in stores.

In more extreme cases where you can’t control your buying impulses, consider leaving your bank cards at home and carrying only cash. In your daily life, you know more or less how much you are going to spend; add to that value an extra for emergencies and ready!

If a temptation appears to you, you will no longer be able to give in because you do not have enough money. And here comes the first piece of advice we gave you. It is likely that by having to go home to get more cash, you will have more time to consider the purchase and give up because it is not worth the effort to return to the store.

Why do we buy things we don’t need?

Here are some reasons:

• We buy by belonging: We all want to feel part of a group, and a common object or experience represents the acceptance or rejection of others.
• We buy for status and recognition: At some point, we are primates, and our ancestral brain is still competing for dominance. Some material goods represent a situation of empowerment and higher social status.
• We buy because of stress and anxiety: The habit of getting something new represents a temporary relief to calm anguish, stress, and anxiety.
• We buy for vanity: We believe that by purchasing certain products, our sexual acceptance will increase, and that is precisely the approach of the advertising and marketing of certain products (think perfume or car ads).
• We buy because it is on sale (and we can return it): having no purchase risk, and even better, having a discount makes that product irresistible, right?
• We buy because of the rebound effect of a previous purchase: You buy another new dress and suddenly need some new earrings and a pair of matching shoes. You buy a new television, and suddenly you want new speakers.

Why is it so important to change the habit of buying unnecessarily?

It is clear that buying unnecessary things makes it more difficult to save or makes us go deeper into debt.

But, things get worse because buying “just to buy”or keep on spending money can spread to other areas of life, such as a lack of control over what you eat, the number of hours of television, what you drink, etc.

Perhaps, the impact of your compulsive purchases in the seductive summer sales will not be noticed today. However, these small accumulated decisions generate a negative impact in the long term.

Your decisions about spending money are reflected in other areas of your life (even without realizing it).

On the contrary, stopping buying “for buying” translates into a positive cumulative effect in the future.

Train self-control and discipline in all areas of your life.

You will see an improvement in being more emotionally intelligent in your food choices, exercise consistency, or ability to build any type of healthy habit.

In addition, stop spending money generates a sense of achievement and personal satisfaction.

Very few people on this planet can boast of saving money. Money seems like butter for most of us (myself included) and quickly slips out of our bank account.

At the end of the month, you don’t know what happened, you haven’t managed to save a penny, and the debts may even grow. And normally, this generates a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration. These small decisions (often impulsive) about our expenses charge us the bill for our well-being.