Have you ever started the day, determined to crank out some serious work, only to find yourself scrolling through social media two hours later?  Ben Hardy, author of Willpower Doesn’t Work says: “You are who you are because of your environment.  Want to change? Then change your environment.” Your goal is to change your spending behavior and  in order to do that, you must change your environment.

Commit to Your Why

What kind of spender do you want to be?  How do you want to feel about your finances?  Maybe your goal is to be more mindful of your spending; or perhaps you just want to feel more in control of your finances. By defining a purpose and setting up an environment for success, you will be more likely to meet your personal financial goals.

Make Your Decisions Easy

The average adult makes 35,000 decisions every day.  We decide what to wear, what to eat, what to look at on social media and so much more.  All of these decisions can lead to decision fatigue, a psychological principle where the more decisions you have to make, the harder it becomes to make good decisions.  By making the environmental shift to remove some of these decisions, it will make things easier for you to meet your goals.

Eliminate Some Decisions

Go through your mobile apps and stop them from spamming you with notifications, that may trigger spending.  For example are you receiving notifications about an upcoming sale? By turning off the notifications, you won’t be tempted to spend before your ready financially. Design your life to support the person you want to be and to support your financial goals. You could also try downloading a budgeting app to help you stick with your goals every month.

Change Your View

According to SocialMediaToday the average person spends nearly two hours on social media every day.  That’s over 5 years of your life.  Your behavior is impacted by what you are seeing on social media.  In addition to preventing an overload of notifications from your apps on your phone, you could choose to unfollow the stores and sale sites in your social media feeds.  You are making a decision to shape what you’re seeing, so it’s easier to make the decisions that support your dreams.

The same goes for email.  According to Fortune.com you spend more than 5 hours each week checking your email.  How many of those emails are store subscriptions?  What if you unsubscribed so you could reduce the time spent on email and increase the amount of time you have to pursue your dreams?

Checklist:

• Stop app notifications
• Unfollow stores and deal sites on social media
• Unsubscribe from emails that aren’t helping you save money
• Reach out to GreenPath for a free financial counseling session

 

Dusti Young has a passion and energy for spreading financial wellness. Through her former role at GreenPath, she connected people to financial wellness by working with GreenPath’s partners.

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