How to Stop Spending Money: 17 Tips for Financial Success!

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and fortunly.com’s article here, the average consumer in the bottom 60% of earners spends more than they make. That’s crazy to me.

But it’s honestly not that surprising. Because these days, it’s easy to spend all of your money and more. With banks and credit card companies lending money to just about anyone, most people simply end up trapped in a cycle of spending, debt, paying off that debt, and spending some more.

If you’re sick of being stuck in the vicious cycle of debt and overspending, do something about it. Don’t just keep spending and spending until you have nothing left. Start to think about why you’re spending all of that money and what you need to do to stop.

In this post, we’re going to tackle the topic of overspending and crush it. I’m going to show you the reasons why people spend a lot of money and 17 awesome ways to curb that spending.

Are you ready to stop your overspending and destroy your debt for good? Alright, let’s go!

Why people spend a lot of money

They’re not paying attention: one of the biggest financial mistakes that you could ever make is to not pay attention to your finances. But unfortunately that’s the catch-22 of this situation – you won’t pay attention so nothing gets your attention and you continue not paying attention. It’s a mind-numbing cycle of horrid financial decisions and inattentiveness.

The don’t care about the future: some people don’t pay attention because they’re scared of what they’ll see. But the majority don’t pay attention because they just don’t care about their finances now and their finances in the future. I get it. Finances can suck sometimes. And the future is pretty far away. But it’s closing in fast. You have to pay attention and you have to care about what’s coming.

They want to live their “best life”: some people just live for the moment. I get that also. It’s easy to say, “screw it…you only live once and I’m making the best of this life.” It’s easy to say that but it’s also to easy to spend everything and make a few more bad decisions to go deep into debt. YOLO doesn’t work in personal finance. Stop being immature and grow up. Fix your finances, stay out of debt, live below your means, and invest like crazy. Then you’ll really be living your best life.

How to stop spending money: 17 tips for financial success

1. Stop borrowing money

If you’re ever going to make progress with your overspending, you have to stop borrowing money. This is absolutely crucial to any good financial plan. Continuing to borrow money is like running toward your goal of building wealth as fast as you can but simultaneously shooting yourself in the foot again and again as you keep trying to make progress. It simply takes you back.

If you simply stop borrowing money, you’ll eventually pay more and more of your debt off and have less expenses every month. All from just not borrowing any more money. Pretty simple, right? And if you’re even more intense, you can pay your debts off quick. That will free up A LOT of money, for real.

If you’d like to learn more about how to stop borrowing money, check out this guide here on the site: “How to Stop Borrowing Money: 10 Step Guide to a Debt Free Life.”

2. Make a budget

If you’re truly looking to stop spending money, the budget can be a game changer. A budget is how you control your money but can help you in a bunch of ways including understanding everything you spend money on, finding what you can cut out completely from your expenses, finding ways you can trim the budget, and ultimately helping you “live below your means” or spend less than you make.

When picking what kind of budget to use, I highly recommend using the zero-based budget because it helps you use every single dollar without waste. I love this budget because YOU control where your money goes at all times and it gives you permission to spend your money without guilt. Just make sure you’re doing a new budget every single month.

Seriously, though, there’s nothing like a budget to help you really get to know your spending and curb overspending dead in its tracks.

For more, check out the following posts:

“7 Ways a Zero-Based Budget is the Best Budget for Your Money”

“37 Ways to Give Yourself a Raise in Your Budget (#27 is Crazy!)“

3. Don’t keep up with the Joneses

You know who the Joneses are: they’re the family that seems to have it all. A big, beautiful house, nice cars, fancy tech gadgets, a huge TV, outlandish furniture, and a ton of stuff. Wow, they must be living the life, right? They might have all that stuff but I guarantee that they’ve got debt up to their eyeballs and the financial stress to match.

These people might seem to have it all but they don’t. And they’re one big emergency or job loss away from losing it all. Because it’s all financed and they have A LOT of payments. They want to show everybody else that they “have money” when they really don’t. The Joneses are completely BROKE.

Don’t be like the Joneses. Whether they’re your relative or your neighbor, you don’t want the financial stress that keeping up with that family brings. It’s also going to affect your financial future. They spend everything they have now and probably don’t invest. So down the road, their finances are going to be a wreck and they won’t have anything for retirement.

Lastly, keeping up with the Joneses requires a lot of spending to buy all of that stuff. So if you just skip this lifestyle, you’ll be able to limit your spending so that you actually have money for everything else.

For some other financial lessons just like this one, check out my post: “17 Financial Lessons You (Really) Need to Learn This Year”

4. No-spend days

One awesome way to not spend money is to have no-spend days. No-spend days are where you challenge yourself to not spend ANY money on anything. Now obviously you have to spend money on bills and required expenses, I get that. But I’m talking about fast food, drinks, nonessential store expenses, clothing, or anything else that you can do without.

These days are awesome and can save you at least a few bucks a day every time you try them.

5. No spend challenge

Now the no-spend challenge is similar but still a little different because it’s for a longer period of time. If you’ve ever tried a no-spend day before, get ready to amp up that easy challenge and extend it out.

The no-spend challenge, depending on how long you make it, could span a week, a month, or a year (extremely tough). But if you can complete it, you can make some serious progress toward your financial goals.

All you need to do is to pick a time frame and go for it. But get ready for a really tough challenge if you try it. My wife and I love to do these over the course of a month or two and it really helps when money is a bit tight. We will also do this challenge if we’re working to save up for something and we need to tighten up for a month. I haven’t tried the year challenge yet, but I might!

If you’d like to learn more about the no spend challenge, check out this post here on the savvy sparrow.com.

6. Tell yourself, “No!”

Another easy way to stop spending money is to simply tell yourself, “NO!” That word is one of the most powerful words in the world, yet there are a lot of people out there that wouldn’t dare tell themselves, “NO!” Maybe because they don’t care or they just want to live their best life. Not being disciplined and being able to tell yourself, “NO!”, is simply immaturity at its finest. Don’t be immature. Be disciplined and be able to tell yourself, “NO!” when you’re spending too much.

7. Stop the emotional or stress spending

Another sheer sign of immaturity is emotional or stress spending. I cannot stand when people tell me they went shopping or bought something expensive because they were stressed and needed to buy something for themselves. This is a ridiculous excuse for not managing your finances and it has to stop.

If this is you, I want you to really think about why you’re doing this. Most people will tell you they spend out of stress. Well guess what? We’re all stressed. If I bought something every time I was stressed, we’d both be broke. I mean I’m literally stressed about something as I’m writing this, but I’m not going to go spend to ease that stress. Instead, I’m easing that stress by finding an activity that helps even more with stress relief – exercise at the gym.

If you’re having trouble with emotional spending, try finding an activity or hobby that helps to ease your stress or your emotions. Spending might help for the moment, but can have a serious impact on your finances (leading to more and more stress later).

This awesome post here from mint.intuit.com can also help if you’re having trouble with emotional or stress spending. Check it out!

8. Stop shopping online

Online shopping can be a really easy way to ruin your finances. But cutting it out can be a ridiculously simple way to curb a lot of your overspending. If you’re desperately trying to save money and discontinue as much spending as possible, try looking at where you’re spending the most money. Many people have problems with online shopping (and yes, Amazon counts, too).

Don’t get me wrong. I love getting stuff on Amazon because you can save a lot of money if you spend on stuff you actually need. But overspending is just as easy on there, as well as on other online stores, and so we need to do something to cut as much online spending out as we can.

Here are two really easy ways to curb that online spending:

Cut up your credit cards: if you have a problem with overspending online – or just in general – credit cards can be a huge enabler of that. They offer you way too much money and so people can spend more than what they make. Cut up your credit cards and only use cash (as in your debit cards) for online purchases.
Take your card information off of all websites: if you’re still having a problem with overspending, even if you’re using your debit card, just take all your card information off of every website they are stored on. The more friction you have online – as in how hard or annoying it is for you to buy something on those sites – the less money you’ll spend.

Do those couple of things and your emotional spending will stop.

9. Stop eating out and cook your own food

Here’s a fantastic way to stop spending A LOT of money. Stop eating out completely and start cooking all of your food.

Eating out can be financial suicide because we have to eat to live. So a lot of people take the easy option and just go buy fast food all the time. Here’s some quick math: with inflation rising, the average fast food meal will cost you about $10 dollars. If you did that for lunch on every work day at 5 meals per week, that’s $50 dollars per week or $200 dollars per month. That’s a lot. There are some that eat out every day. That would cost you $280 per month. And if you ate out twice a day, that’s $560 per month. That’s crippling.

Here’s a bit more math. If you invested that $280 dollars per month for 30 years you could have $600,000 dollars. And if you invested that $560 dollars per month for 30 years, you would have around $1.2 million dollars. I really hope you enjoyed that fast food.

On the flip side of things, cooking your own food can continue to save you money. Yes, I know that you have to buy groceries and they cost money, too. But cooking your own food AND not eating out is absolutely going to save you $100 dollars per month or more on your total food bill for the month.

For more on how to save money on your food bill every month, check out this post: “47 Tips and Tricks for Saving Money at the Grocery Store.”

10. Make your own coffee

We all know how expensive coffee can be. From a regular cup costing $2-3 dollars on up to those $7-8 dollar (or more) specialty coffees, this can really cause massive overspending. I mean, my wife’s favorite drink is $7 dollars and steadily getting more expensive every day with insane inflation. But she’s very frugal and we’ve agreed on a decent coffee budget, so we’re doing okay.

But if you’re struggling with spending due to your coffee addiction, here are a couple of things that you can do:

Set a coffee budget: like I said, my wife and I agreed to a $40 dollar coffee budget. That’s just about 1-2 per week. She said she felt good about that. And if we get to the end of the month and she wants 1 more, she just goes and gets it because we know we’ve done well for the month.
Reward yourself: I do this with fast food. I usually either start the week off right with a fast food meal or I reward myself for sticking to the budget with a fast food meal at the end of the week. Simple and easy to do.
Invest in a quality coffee machine: in order to stay within the coffee budget, we decided to invest in a high-quality specialty coffee machine. Between the daily cup of regular coffee and the occasional specialty coffee my wife makes with it, it’s already paid for itself in just a couple of months.

Do yourself a favor and don’t let overspending on coffee crush your financial goals.

11. DIY date nights

My wife and I have recently committed to having more date nights. But these can be expensive if you’re always going out. So we (mostly she) came up with the idea of doing more date nights at home because they’re cheaper, you don’t need a babysitter, and you don’t have to travel anywhere to do them. So we just wait until our son goes to sleep and find something off of our list to do that night. Most times, she will plan something for us to do beforehand and then we’ll do whatever it is after our son’s bedtime.

(Stay tuned for our epic post to come soon on the 101 best DIY date night ideas!)

12. DIY play dates

Another great way to save money is by doing DIY play dates with our son and other kids. Most of the time, just hanging out with another family at one or the other’s house counts and it’s completely free. But we will also plan activities with other families that are cheap or free. These might include going to the local science center on our membership (other families we know have them, too), going to different parks, or anything else we can think of that day.

13. DIY gifts

Gift giving can be incredibly expensive every year. Between birthdays and Christmas, your annual gift expenses can range into the hundreds of dollars. Instead, try replacing some of those expensive, store-bought gifts with more personalized DIY gift ideas. You can create, make, or bake something awesome. Just Google “DIY Gift ideas for (your person’s gender of choice)” and there will probably be a thousand gift ideas. Pinterest can also be a good idea. Save money on gifts and DIY it this year!

14. Repair rather than replace

Another great way to spend less money this year is to repair anything that’s broken, rather than just immediately replacing. You car having some issues? Doesn’t mean you need a new car. Just work on getting the repairs done. Fridge went out? You don’t need a new one. Just get the needed repairs and move on. Just because something is broken, it doesn’t mean it will immediately need replacement. Repairs can help you save money and have stuff last longer for you.

15. Upcycling

Upcycling is basically recycling and reusing stuff in your home to use for alternative purposes. One great example is turning old t-shirts and old towels into rags. Another example is repurposing bins and boxes for other organizational purposes. And there are tons of other great upcycling ideas that you can try. For 101 great ideas, check out this awesome post here on us.paguroupcycle.com.

16. Workout at home

Instead of forking out $30-50 dollars or more for a gym membership that you don’t use, why not cancel that and work out from home?

Look, let me first just say that I’m a HUGE gym advocate. I have a gym membership and I use it 4-5 times per week. So if you actually use your membership, keep it! If you only use the weight machines and cardio equipment, you could downgrade to a 24/7 fitness-type gym like I did for like $15-20 bucks. But if you actually use it, just keep what you have. However, if you don’t use your membership and you’re actively paying for one to make yourself feel good, it’s time to stop. You’re just wasting money and that money could be used for much better things.

Cancel that membership and work out at home. There are thousands of workouts online, between the online articles and ALL of the videos on YouTube.

17. Work more

The last tip on this list is one of the best money-saving tips I’ve ever gotten in my life. And it’s SO simple. If you’re looking to stop spending as much money, just go to work. It’s as easy as that. When you go to work, under normal conditions you’re not spending any money because you are actively doing a job. And you’re making money on top of that.

So the more you work, the less you spend, and the more money you make on top of that!

Finally

Overspending is a real problem. I know that I used to do it way too much. And maybe you’re stuck in an overspending cycle right now. But at least you’re thinking about it and working toward better discipline with money. Hopefully you’ve found at least 1 or 2 great ideas in this post to curb your spending and start changing your financial picture. Because that’s all I want for you. Now get out there and start bulletproofing your finances!