Retraining Your Brain

If you’ve ever done a weight loss program, you know that retraining your brain is the most important step to achieving your goals. In finance, the same is true. Knowing your triggers for overspending and then coming up with practical solutions to avoid or minimize them is key to future financial success.

To achieve your financial goals, you have to take an honest look at why you’re overspending, maybe where you’re overspending, and then retrain your brain to help create more sustainable, healthy habits. Let’s take a look at a few key questions that can help you retrain your brain below.

Question 1: Why are you Overspending?

It seems like a simple question, but the answer could be one of a number of things:

1. You’ve never budgeted before and just don’t understand the idea that sometimes the answer is no.
2. You have a “treat yourself” mentality.
3. Your income isn’t enough for the expenses you truly incur.
4. You’re bored and browse Amazon or your favorite online retailer.
5. You don’t know you are overspending.
6. You’re trying to “keep up with the Joneses” or maintain a certain appearance.

The answer to why you’re overspending could be a combination of a few of the things listed above or even something entirely different. Don’t skip this step. Really start to unpack why overspending is an issue for you.

One thing I had to do recently was separate out my Gmail inbox. All of the emails from friends, family, financial institutions, and anything important comes to my primary inbox. But all of my emails from retailers go straight to my promotions tab and I have to make a special effort to see these emails. I did this because online shopping can become an easy nemesis for me. If I see great deals on cute clothes for my kids or a promotion for my favorite coffee shop, it used to be easy to jump on it, thinking I might miss out. But I’ve realized, if I don’t need something in the first place, I’m not really missing out. If my kids need clothes or if I really want a coffee, I can look through my promotions tab emails and see if anyone is running a sale and then make the decision whether to buy or not. This allows me to be the judge of if something is needed rather than allowing retailers to market me and force me to overspend.

Question 2: Where are you Overspending?

This goes along with the last question a little, but think about specific stores or online retailers where you tend to overspend. Then, be intentional about how to make the trips to these locations fewer or avoid them all together.

If you’re a Target mom like me, Target can easily sucker me in if I just decide to go and browse. From their kids clothes, to diapers, to food, to really anything I could possibly need, Target’s got it all. But the problem is, if I don’t need anything or haven’t budgeted for it and I take a stroll through Target, chances are, I’ll end up with something in my cart anyway. Since having 4 kids, I have taken fewer Target shopping trips. And you know what? We all survive! Turns out most of my impulse buys from Target weren’t necessities! If I do need something from Target, a lot of times I’ll do Drive Up just to limit my temptation of walking through the store.

Maybe you’re like me or maybe it’s something else for you. Amazon? Your kids’ favorite retailer? The grocery store? Where do you overspend and how can you limit or avoid these places to limit your temptation to overspend?

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve answered the two questions and done some honest evaluation, now you’re ready to retrain your brain.

Retraining your brain financially starts with identifying issues or potential issues. For me, some problem areas were:

• Emails with great deals on clothes for me or my kids
• Wandering around Target looking for “nothing inparticular”
• Biggby BOGO coupons delivered to me via email (keeping it real, y’all!)

I can’t answer for you the two questions above, but once you have, make a list of the key places or issues that cause you to overspend. Once I was able to identify areas where it was easy for me to impulse buy or overspend, I could come up with a strategy to help me in those areas. My current strategy includes:

• Filtering my email inbox so I don’t see promotions unless I’m looking for them
• Limiting Target trips to Drive Up or trips with a purpose

So what are your triggers? What is one step you can take today to address your why and where and set yourself up for a healthier financial future? Let’s start retraining our brain today!