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It’s one thing to make a budget, it’s a whole other thing to stick to it. In a recent study of 25,000 people, it was determined that 36% of the people were living paycheck to paycheck and 19% of people were spending more than they made and racking up more and more debt each month just to survive. 

Managing your money is just one of the important keys to building wealth. 

If you’re like some of the statistics and your budget keeps getting busted on habitual spending I’ve got 16 tips to help you stop spending money on unnecessary things.

Everyone buys stuff they don’t need. For me, it’s planners, I love planners. But you only need one planner and I keep trying to tell myself that but I still don’t listen. 

There’s hope for you though. 

You can stop spending money on unnecessary purchases, you just need to be intentional whenever you open your wallet.

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How to Stop Spending Money on Things You Don’t Need

Don’t believe the lie that you can’t stick to a budget. If you follow these 16 tips, you’ll begin to control your spending and you’ll find budgeting easier and the easier the better you get at budgeting.

1. Create a realistic budget

You’re totally capable of making the perfect budget for you. The budget that doesn’t spend money on tacos and pays off debt with gazelle intensity. But does your budget match where you’re at mentally?

If you make a budget that’s so strict it’s unrealistic, you’re unlikely to follow through with it. And that means forgetting it altogether and buying more stuff you don’t need.

Do yourself a favor and make a realistic budget that makes slight improvements every month.

Sticking with change is easier when you’re making gradual improvements and improvement is way more important than trying to be perfect.

Tips to create a realistic budget: 

• Check your last 2-3 months’ bank statements and figure out what you’re spending in each category. This will help you create a realistic number for each category. 
• After a couple of months of consistent budgeting, then try to decrease your spending by 20% or so in the categories where you feel you’re overspending. 
• Add in personal spending money. 
• Add in a buffer category for unexpected expenses. This isn’t to replace your emergency fund, it’s to stop you from dipping into your emergency fund. This category is typically $100 a month. 

2. Break bad habits

We all have things we buy without thinking. Grabbing a drive-thru coffee on the way to somewhere, grabbing a candy while in line at the grocery store, or grabbing a burrito when you work late. At one point there was thought behind this purchase it was a reward, a means to an end, etc. But now, it’s a habit.

It’s time to identify your bad habits and break them.

Breaking bad habits will save you so much money and it’ll get you to the point where you’re spending with intention instead of letting a well-crafted ad or yummy smell control your wallet.

Tips to break bad money habits:

• Save money on coffee by making it at home.
• Track your expenses.
• Don’t use a cart at the store. 
• Create a budget. 
• Leave your card at home. 
• Shop with a list. 
• Budget personal spending money

3. Build healthier habits

If you’re going to try to break a bad habit, you have to replace it with a good one! It’s much easier to figure out what to replace it with when you’ve identified your values and you know the driving motivation for the habit.

Once you figure out why you started the bad habit in the first place, develop a new habit that meets the same purpose without costing you money.

4. Cut down on decision fatigue 

Can you jump from the ground to the second story of a building? No! 

That’s why there are stairs, elevators, or at least bouncy shoes (I’m watching a lot of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and bouncy shoes are their solution to a lot of problems.) 

We recognize our bodies are only physically capable of so much, but we don’t help our brains in the same way. Every day our brains have a finite store of energy, once it’s gone we’re caput, or rather, we develop decision fatigue.

That’s why it’s always easy to follow a diet until 4 pm. Once our brains get fatigued our decisions get worse and worse. 

So when you cut down on the number of decisions you make each day you’ll set yourself up to make better decisions, at least until 5 or 6 pm.

5. Try a no-spend challenge

Everything in moderation is not my motto. I’m so bad at moderation, I’m all in or nothing. If you’re similar to me a no-spend challenge could help you detox your spending so you don’t end up with as many unnecessary purchases.

A no-spend challenge is difficult to carry out but it’s super easy to organize. Follow a few simple rules and you can design a challenge that saves you money while showing you more about your habits and impulses.

A no-spend challenge is one of the money hacks we used to pay off over $78,000 in just under 2 years with average incomes. 

6. Set up barriers

Some purchases are simply impulse buys and the best way to stop, without getting to the root of the problem, is to set up barriers to those purchases. 

Some ways to set up barriers to stop impulse spending: 

• Leave your card at home.
• Dump your cart at Target before you get to the checkout.
• Shop with a list and stick to it.
• Stop automatically saving your debit and credit cards on websites and delete your card numbers if you’ve already saved them on a website.
• If something isn’t in the budget, wait 24 hours before purchasing.

Setting up barriers can help with habits too. Take a different route home from work or change your weekly schedule. Changing up your routine can be the barrier that wakes your brain up and prevents an unwanted purchase.

7. Use cash

Using cash isn’t everyone’s favorite way to pay but you can’t deny that it keeps you from spending money! When you leave your cards at home and only bring the cash you need, you’re far less likely to spend frivolously. 

When you use cash, you spend less. The physical act of handing over your cash to the cashier and watching it leave your hand psychologically causes you to spend less. 

When you swipe a card (whether it’s a debit or credit card), you don’t feel it the same. Study after study has proven this to be true. 

Cash envelopes are a great way to organize the cash for your budget categories (especially in the categories where you’re tempted to overspend). 

8. Make a plan

Plans are not the restriction people make them out to be, plans actually give you freedom! When you plan your weekend events, meals, and other things, you’re not tempted by all the ways other people want you to spend your money.

Ways to plan your money to help you spend less: 

• Start meal planning
• Create a budget
• Your date nights and activities

9. Educate yourself

Learn the impact that your purchases have on your finances, your community, and the world. When I stopped thinking just about how my purchases made me feel or if I could afford them at the time, I gained conviction to be more responsible with my spending.

I don’t want my kids to have to take care of me in retirement or contribute to the plastic trash swirling round in our oceans for decades to come. I want to have the money to pay extra to invest in small businesses and donate to causes I care about.

I think if you take the time to educate yourself, you’ll find some of the same convictions. 

Here are a few places that can shed some light on how our rampant consumerism is affecting people and the environment:

• Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• Consumerism & Negative Mental Health Effects
• 30% to 40% of all food is wasted

10. Track your expenses

Tracking your expenses is a game-changer for your money. It gives you a real picture and view of where your money is actually going. 

We all know that just because you budget $500 a month in groceries, but that doesn’t mean you spend $500 a month. 

When you track your expenses and get a real view of what’s going on, you can make realistic changes to your budget to save more money and pay off debt faster. 

The best free budgeting app to track your expenses is Mint. Mint is amazing and can help you create your budget, track your expenses, send you bill payment alerts, and more. 

11. Unfollow accounts on social media tempting you to spend money

Unfollow the accounts on social media that tempt you to spend money (even your friends). 

There isn’t a rule that you’re only a good friend if you follow your friends on social media. Your finances and stop spending more money are more important than following them on social media. 

You can always follow them again later. 

12. Think about spending your money in hours worked versus the actual dollar amount

Ex: You make $20 an hour.

• You want a new TV that costs $500. 
• It’s on sale and it’s reasonably priced. You think it’s a good buy. 
• How many hours will it take to buy that TV? 
• $500 (TV cost) divided by $20/hour (salary) equals 25 hours.
• So you would have to work 25 hours 2.5 days to pay for the purchase. Is a TV worth 2.5 days of work? 

This really helps you when you’re thinking about making an impulse purchase. 

13. Look at what you already have before spending

Before thinking of making a purchase, check the items you have on hand. There are probably things you’ve purchased at your house that you have forgotten about. 

• Instead of buying a new book – is there one you have that you haven’t read before? 
• Instead of buying new makeup – is there some makeup you have shoved in a drawer and forgotten about that you can use instead?
• You want a new piece of home decor – can you rearrange your furniture or even your wall art to make the room look new again? 
• You want a new coffee mug – how many do you have? Do you really need a new one?

We as a society buy so much stuff that we forget what we even have. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found things I forgot about when I’m decluttering. 

Look around your house and make do with what you have before spending. 

14. Hack your way to get free stuff

You can get so much stuff for free these days! I’ve gotten free furniture, free baby gear, and even a free tricycle for my son. 

You don’t have to go out and buy new things. When you get used stuff, you save money and the environment in one fell swoop. 

Hacks to Get Free Stuff: 

• How to Get Free Furniture
• Free Ways to Workout
• Get Free Clothes with a Clothings Swap Party 
• How to Get Free Baby Stuff

15. Budget Fun Money

Add fun money (or personal money) to your budget. When you don’t have any personal spending money, you feel constrained. 

This can lead to you blowing you budget because you getting angry or frustrated and going on a spending spree.  

Just do yourself a favor and budget fun money for you and your spouse. 

You get to determine the amount. Usually, I see people’s fun money budget around $20 – $100 a person depending on your income and money goals.  

$20 – $50 per person is usually the average for most people. 

16. Know Your Triggers

Know the triggers that cause you to impulse spend. This will help you put up barriers to prevent it from happening in the future. 

Maybe when you’re upset you go crazy at Target. Maybe when you go out with your friends, they talk you into spending more than you planned at Ulta. 

Whatever the case is, just recognize it and work to create a barrier to prevent it from happening again. 

Examples:

Trigger: Can’t control your spending at Target

Barrier: 1. Don’t get a cart. Just purchase what you can carry. 

               2. Don’t go in the store – order pickup. 

Trigger: Spend too much when you’re out with friends.

Barrier: Leave the card at home and bring cash. 

You can put up barriers to help you stop overspending. 

You can learn to change your money habits and create the financial life of your dreams. I went from blowing my money on impulse purchases and blowing my budget to paying off over $78,000 in under 2 years and remaining debt-free! 

If I can change my bad money habits, I have faith that you can too. You don’t have to have a degree in finance or have everything all figured out to win with money.