Make Saving Money Fun, Not the Spending

While I’ve never been Miss Spendypants, I do hear the siren song of it. Unless you’ve naturally fallen into the habit, it’s ridiculously hard to make saving money feel fun. That’s what it comes down to when you want that dopamine hit getting delivery or future packages will provide. Especially in these shitty, shitty times we now find ourselves in.

Times are stressful, not gonna lie. This global shitstorm makes it even harder to get your financial shit together. The brain’s wired to panic when presented with a threatening situation, which, in modern times, means you’re now caged in a ball of anxiety all the time. It sucks. It’s going to continue to suck. With this internal screaming going on it’s actually quite difficult to shift gears on this saving.

We don’t need to grasp at warm and fuzzies right now when the constant barrage of SHIT coming down the pipe. I’m not asking you to run off to live in the woods and renounce the pleasures of civilization. Instead, let’s drag our stupid brains out from the Stone Age and give ourselves the best chance at weathering this and coming back out on top.

And while we can turn this ship around, it will take some hard effort.

Even with that I can still commiserate with toning down the spend. Two out of three people from a recent Mint survey admitted they have no clue how much they spend in a given month. This May came an analysis that showed Americans are paying a LOT more than usual to get through this pandemic storm; I understand the double-digit increases for cleaning products and home entertainment, but not the increases for clothing (no one’s seeing you!) or going out (you know we’re in a pandemic, right?) or on travel (AGAIN, PANDEMIC).

Again, this is hard to start doing. Mostly because it’s a SLOG. There’s no instant gratification with saving like there is with spending. When you’re starting to make saving money “fun” you’re really staring down the barrel of how much your old financial decision-making is engrained in your lifestyle. Said decision-making may even support this lifestyle and you hate the thought of trying to untangle it all.

Recognize How Spending Makes You Feel

Retail therapy is called that for a reason; spending money is specifically designed to make you feel good. You can thank corporations for that after they’ve poured billions into market research, subliminal advertising, and psychological triggers to game it that way. Spending is designed to make us feel good so we’ll keep doing it and make THEM richer overall.

And if you continue to Not Think About It, you will also continue to fall prey to this exactly. Do better because you deserve better; money is power and you should have more of it. Take some time to meditate or go somewhere nice and quiet, then think over how your last online purchases or shopping trip made you feel. Nobody’s immune to how nice it is to wander around a Target or mall. You know whatever trinket you spot could be yours for the taking. It might make you feel in control when you’re dealing with the chaos of 2020 life. Maybe it makes you feel powerful. Or rich, in the sense of “hey look, I have the spending power so WHO CARES ABOUT MANAGING MONEY?”

Whatever it is you feel, acknowledge it… and acknowledge for how long that feeling lasts. It’s never that long-lasting, is it? Reminding yourself of that will go a long way in curbing your spending impulses; for you challenge-loving types out there, that alone could make saving money more fun.

Rewards Program

If you’re everyone else, you’re going to need more than emotional grunt work to make saving money more fun. Why not set yourself up with a rewards program for hitting certain goals on your path to wealth?

This, by the way, doesn’t mean “deprive yourself of all treats unless you hit these goals”. Doing that cold turkey, or unprepared, leads too much into depression and restless frustration. Fortitude’s already in short order thanks to this year we’ve had; let’s not make it worse. No, I mean giving yourself something unusually special whenever you hit your goals. Your goal might be saving 5% more in your 401(k) account. Or: maintaining a $1,000 emergency fund. Or simply to become financially literate and elevate yourself higher than most Americans. An example list showing your goals and rewards might look like this:

1. Increase my savings by $500 – buy Sephora palette*
2. Reach $2,000 in emergency fund – get takeout from favorite fancy restaurant
3. Stick to budget for holiday gift shopping – drink favorite wine
4. Invest $1,000 more in my Roth IRA – get a weekend vacation!

Notice these aren’t the little everyday treats you should have already built into your budget. They’re different from the incrementals that help you continue on. These are special.

It’s also helpful to have a trusted friend keep you on top of hitting your goals. If you’re part of Money Twitter we’ve got people like A Purple Life who are more than happy to hold you accountable week after week and free of charge.

Important Note

If you do go the rewards route, make sure your goals are following the SMART model. Setting a goal of “half a million in one year!” when you’re still in debt just makes you feel behind when you’re really not. Check out your numbers and decide on how you can do better with them.

Know you won’t always have those numbers either; three years ago I was making $40k and felt frazzled way too often. That is far from my reality today, which means my goals today look a lot different than they did in 2017. Trust yourself to get this done and things will, seriously, get better. Evaluate where you are, where you want to be, and what it’s going to take to reach that peak.

Doing this internal work to make saving money fun is going against what you’ve been taught by the media to do. Working on this is a struggle out of the gate; it can feel like way too much if you go too hard too soon. Remember that you can scale this up over time. It’s worth it to start even if you start slowly. And once you start seeing your savings start to stack up, you start feeling like maybe you can take on this adulting thing after all.

Cover image credit: Harry Grout via Unsplash

*that’s an affiliate link, bt dubs.