Why Denial is Not Always the Best Way to Save Money
We’re all familiar with the feeling:
We’ve had a horrible wake-up call of some description. A credit card has been refused, or a cheque returned, and we tell ourselves, “That’s IT! I’m never going to be in this situation again!”. So we make a budget, and bargain on spending the absolute minimum on the smallest number of things possible. We swear that we’ll never again have a Starbucks coffee, or a takeaway pizza or a new book. NO! From now on, we will be a superhero/ine of frugality, we will be … CAPTAIN FRUGAL!
And the first day feels pretty good. We walk past the Starbucks and feel all virtuous because we brought our own coffee from home. We make pizza from scratch at home and tell everyone around the table how little it cost and point out how much better it tastes. We go to the library at lunchtime and order that new book we fancied instead of buying. Yay us!
But by the end of the week, we’re getting a bit tired. It’s been a horrible week, we’ve missed our coffee, we don’t have time to get to the grocery shop and the library hasn’t got that book because it has only just been released. So we get to Saturday, go into town, buy a really extravagant coffee, eat out in a Trattoria and buy ourselves that book. In hardcover, so it will last longer. We tell ourselves that it is a little reward for being so good all week.
And BANG! goes that budget.
I’ve done it *so* many times, I don’t care to think about it.
And after thinking about it, I reckon that the key to defeating this cyclical behaviour is figuring out our flash points. What luxuries do we really need to keep us sane? If we cut out *everything*, then it isn’t long before we start feeling sorry for ourselves and we weaken. There need to be a few articles that we allow ourselves so that we don’t feel deprived.
Mine is most definitely sweets. I crave chocolate and cake every day. When I cut it out, I feel deprived and depressed. Which means that when I finally give way to my sugar addiction, I will buy four or five chocolate bars to make up for having none. And I’ll eat them all. I will have spent a couple of pounds on sweets, and I’ll feel awful about my waistline and my budget. If I’d just bothered to keep a small amount of cake in the house, then I could have had a little every day and avoided my unhealthy binge. I like making cake. It costs pennies when I make it myself. So what am I *really* losing on this deal?
So, my challenge to you today is to think about what your flashpoints are. Consider drawing up a budget that allows you those flashpoints. By sacrificing a few pennies on something small, you may just find it easier to stick to a budget that will save you pounds.
If you found this post helpful, please consider helping me to pay my hosting costs... Or a Nice Cup of Tea!
Comment by Chris C
This is a well-known (and almost as well ignored) thing about dieting. utting out everything, in particular all ‘treats’, sets up a craving as a reaction (as you say, after the first few days/weeks of self-righteousness) and ends up either in depression or in ‘binge’ behaviour when the person finally breaks. Lots of people find that having no chocolate at all in the house, for instance, will trigger a craving where they then search out anything sweet and cram themselves with it, whereas having an amount available paradoxically makes it a lot easier to resist “this time”, because they know it’s there so that they can treat themselves another time.
In the case of cakes or other treats which you make yourself cheaply, as you say it’s definitely a false economy. It’s cutting out something which you do actually need to keep sane about what you’re doing.
Comment by RK
Mmm, also, if you allow yourself the “luxury” of regular baking of small amounts of sweets, you not only spend less than you would on buying the same amounts, not to mention the “reward-binges” described, but you ALSO get the pleasure of baking, the potential to share the activity itself with family, the lovely smell & warmth (emotional as well as physical) of a baked-in kitchen, the choice of how warm to have your cake, the pleasure/treat of licking the bowl yourself or delighting in another’s pleasure at being allowed to do that…
…of course, the downside is using up the time for baking… but then otoh you don’t have to spend the time to go to where you can buy sweets/cake/stuff.