March Spring Clean: Day 12

Yesterday we had a think about our personal finance bad habits, or our worst spending habit. Most of us really know, even if it’s deep down and never spoken about, what our worst money habits are.

Today, take your worst money habit and start working on it. Don’t feel bad if you can’t fix it all in one go – sometimes making massive or harsh changes can backfire and the problem can end up getting worse. Stopping a behaviour pattern dead isn’t always the answer.

If you’re feeling up to the challenge, try to cut your worst area of overspending by half. For example, if you buy 10 overpriced coffees per week, you could try cutting it down to 5 to see how you get on. Or if you hit the shopping mall both days at the weekend, try cutting it back to just the one day.

It goes without saying that if you have a genuine addiction then trying to cut the behaviour by half is unlikely to be effective. Smoking, problem drinking, gambling and Class A’s are something else, and a lot more support is going to be needed. If that might be you, use today get some help from your GP or visit an organisation like Gamcare’s website.

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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.

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