A few tips that can help you save more money to invest.
Plan your meals
Multiple trips to the grocery store is a waste of time and energy, and will also increase the risk of unnecessary purchases since you will be faced with temptations multiple times instead of just one or maybe two.
Plan your meals in advance, make a shopping list and buy what you need for a week. If buying for a whole week at the time seems impossible, plan for two trips per week instead – you might be able to reduce it down to one visit later on when you are more used to the concept.
Visiting the grocery store just once a week doesn´t mean you have to live on canned tuna. There are a lot of fresh food – including fruit, veggies and berries – that will last for a week or more if you take good care of them. Also, don´t turn your nose up on frozen produce. Multiple studies have shown that the nutritional value in pure frozen vegetables, fruits and berries is excellent, as they are frozen very soon after being harvested.
Avoid making purchase decisions when you are tired
We wake up with a fresh stash of ”decision energy” that we can use throughout the day to make wise decisions that align with our goals. But the more decisions we have to make, the more decision energy we consume. After a long day of making decisions, we have very little decison energy left. So, when you are dragging your feet through the supermarket after work or thinking about what to make for dinner at 7 pm, it is easy to make the wrong decisions and opt for bad impulse purchases in the store or ordering that expensive but convenient take-out dinner.
Try to make your decisions in advance, when you are well-rested and have plenty of decision energy to spend. You can for instance make a habit out of planning your meals on your day off and putting together a shopping list.
Pay off credits quicker than required
Do you have a bunch of small and/or mid-sized loans with mid to high interest rates? Pick the one with the highest interest rate and start paying it off quicker than required. Once you have gotten rid of that loan, you will have more room in your budget (since you are no longer making those high-interest payments) and can proceed to make larger than normal payments on another loan. Keeping this up can quickly turn into a very positive upward spiral for your budget.
Become an investo-holic instead of a shopa-holic
Looking for suitable investments and making investment decisions can actually create the same excitment and warm fuzzy feelings that shopaholics derive from shopping. Many self-proclaimed shopaholics have managed to turn themselves into investoholics by learning more about investments and taking an active interest in stock and stock based CFD trading. It can take some time to shift over if your brain have many years of experience from equalling shopping with happyness and saving with boredome, but it is by no means impossible.
