March Spring Clean: Day 11

We’re carrying on with the second week of our March Spring Clean, and today’s going to be a quiet moment to think about your finances.

What’s your worst financial habit? Or, looking at this from a slightly different angle, do you have any habits that are costing you too much money? You might know the answer to this right away, even if it’s hard to admit it to yourself at first. Have a really good think about it.

Sometimes our worst habits aren’t so obvious, however. If you can’t quickly name your worst money-related habit, you can try going though your bank or credit card statements to see where all the money goes each month – you might find there’s an especially large monthly bill of some sort, a high frequency of certain types of purchase, or maybe there’s a lot of cash coming out of the ATM.

If the picture still doesn’t become clear, you can try starting a spending diary today and keeping it for a week, or even a month. I’ve been keeping these on and off for a while, and they’re always good for showing me when I’m slipping back into any bad old habits.

That’s it for today, but we’re going to carry on with this theme tomorrow.

***

If you’d like a full month-long Jump Start programme with lots of extra activities and resources – including a comprehensive Tenner Week – we’ve made one in ebook format that can be downloaded from Amazon. Find out more about the Jump Start 2013 ebook.

***