Maybe It's In the WAY That You Spend It

My daughter was getting ready for school this morning and was having a problem locating her backpack (which was supposed to have been located and loaded last night, rule #1, check for yourself that all is in order that is supposed to be for the next day – our new rule is no tv until everything is order for school tomorrow)

I wasn’t of much help because #1, I had no idea where she had put it and #2, she has two, one older one that is very similar to the new one.

It occurred to me – why does she even have two? There is a pretty good reason, the old one was still usable but it’s nice to send them off to a new year with new school supplies, so she got a new one in Sept. But it did get me thinking that she has far too many “twos” (or more)

Both of my daughter’s have “shoe collections”. When I was a kid I had one pair that lasted me the entire year, my "good" shoes for school became my play shoes for summer (besided winter boots and one pair of slippers)

So I got pondering why this is. We are not rich. When they where young, they got a lot of “new to you” things from relatives, but we never went overboard on shopping.

And it hit me. I never used credit cards back then. It wasn’t so easy to cave when they wanted something, frivolous purchases just where not the norm.

It is nice to be able to pick up some extras sometimes, but I think the availability of credit in our house has created a few problems.

Firstly, I just did bills last night, and we never seem to get far with our credit card payments. As fast as we pay, they are “loaded” again.

Secondly, there is so much more clutter than I ever had growing up. Because we just have too much. Mostly stuff that isn’t even used, or so junky that it breaks after a week or so.

It also does nothing to teach the kids that everything doesn’t grow on trees. My 2 older “pre credit card” kids seem to know this lesson and pay for most of their own extras. But my youngest resembles a movie star marching through the store - she'll take one of everything some days. One time I bought her a doll that she “had to have” and when we got it home I forgot to give it to her. She never noticed! Ever!

It was an eye opener for me.

I think that I am going to go back to cash when shopping at the mall in particular. Cash for groceries as opposed to the debit card also helps to cut spending. That’s a whole other story.

ACTION TIP

Think about your spending habits. Not so much what you spend it on, but how you are spending it. Look into the habit of using cash or the envelope system.

Get your shopping habits under control and the benefits will trickle down in many ways.

PS - I came across this handy tool that is the answer to a lot of the problems that I and many of us have with tracking our spending, especially when using credit and debit cards as well as cash.

It's called Budget Map, it works just like a check register only it includes your budget and/or tracking system for all areas.

It's very simple to use - my kind of thing (if it's not simple, it won't work for me!)

Budget Map - Makes it easy to keep it together for a change!