FOMO Spending – How to stop overspending on your credit cards!

Why do I keep overspending on my credit cards!

We live in a world of instant gratification, rather than see something we want, save and buy it, retailers make it so easy for you to have it now, and sometimes this ‘easy credit’ is so good for their business, it becomes the business and the products they sell, are secondary so that they can offer more debt.

We are all media icons, to a lesser or greater degree, in our own social media world. We have two lives, our reality and our social profile, we no longer compare ourselves to our fellow students, or work colleagues we compare ourselves to our vast social media network and reality TV celebrities, this makes the pressure to ‘stand out’, improve or feel connected significant.

Because we are more and more living a life based on our thought patterns i.e. what we think rather than reality, we are becoming more and more detracted from reality, this is why the mindfulness and meditation has grown so much in popularity in recent years, it helps people break their thought patterns and experience real life.

When we shop we get a feel good factor in the moment, a boost of dopamine, this boost gives us confidence and that confidence makes us feel good, unfortunately it’s not sustainable, because we are linking our pleasure to spending, which is an external relationship and something which is not sustainable, we can all run out of money!

How to stop!

Spending money is not a bad thing, I think too many money experts try to suggest you invest every penny for your retirement; now that sounds like a boring life!

However, spending other peoples money, or debt is a bad thing. There are few things in life, which borrowing money is acceptable for, I’d include a house in there, but that’s about it.

Therefore, if you were shown how to manage your money, which allowed you to shop and spend on the things you wanted, you’d have the Money Plan, not a diet. Nobody likes the diets which says you ‘can’t have this, or that’. Tell someone they can’t drink any wine ever again, or chocolate or pizza, they’d last all of a few weeks. Tell them they can have these indulgences in moderation, say on a cheat day, or at the weekend, you have a more sustainable eating plan, for life.

You need to organise your finances so that no more than 50% of your net income is allocated to your house bills, 20% is allocated to savings and debt repayment and 30% is allocated to your day to day spending money or WAM ‘Walk About Money’ as I like to call it.

Now, if paid monthly, most people will spend all their WAM within a week or two and then be on a financial fast until pay day comes around again…..this is a diet, it’s not sustainable. Therefore, you must allocate your WAM, ie allowance weekly, so pay 1/4 of your monthly allowance each week.

In my Bank Account System that I share in The Money Plan book, we automate as much of your monthly spending as possible, to take routine thought out of everyday actions, and part of this would be your weekly WAM payment, paid on a Wednesday! That’s important, it’s paid on a Wednesday because we spend most of our money on a Weekend, and therefore the Wednesday payment is cleared funds for a Friday night party night! You’ll have some left over for your Saturday shop, or sports game, then a lunch or something on Sunday, if it’s all spent, you only have two days (Monday and Tuesday) when you’re likely to be back at work, rather than two weeks, before payday roles around again.

Let’s stop the vicious cycle of over spending;

• UK consumer debt is £1,630,1 Billion and has risen 19%in the last 5 years
• Student debt has doubled to £100.5 billion in the past 5 years, council tax arrears have increased 12% in the last 5 years.
• UK households are the second most indebted nations in the G8 at150% of income, abiogenesis USA and Italy.

Source: The Guardian UK Debt Crisis, Bank of England 2017

Click here to get your copy of my book, The Money Plan