How can you make it easier to change your financial behavior?
The Challenge
Think about an online store or app that you regularly use to make purchases, but would like to decrease your spending on. For example, a particular clothing store, Amazon, or maybe a ride-sharing app. Take a few minutes to unlink your credit card from that platform so that the next time you want to make a purchase, you have to reenter the entire number.
Why do this?
One-click purchasing makes it extremely easy to accidentally spend too much. Every step that you add between seeing something you'd like and handing over your money makes it less likely that you'll follow through on the purchase. You can use this fact to your advantage when you're trying to slow down on spending.
Make it harder for yourself to make a choice that you know is bad for you in the long term, and you'll end up making more good choices with your money overall.
What’s next?
If you're trying to cut down on your spending significantly, unlink your credit card from as many apps and online stores as possible. You could also take this one step further by taking out a prepaid debit card that you use only for these kinds of purchases, and just putting on the amount you'd like to budget for those purchases each month.
