Psychological Tricks to Save Money: How to Change Your Mindset

How you think about money

You're going to look at your money and see I don't have enough to pay my debt, I don't have enough to meet my savings goals, and I don't have enough to meet my needs. If you start thinking of money from a positive perspective, it can change everything.

Credit card companies are using psychology against you every single day. They're not letting you know that they're raising your interest rates. I'm not talking about two or three percent, I'm talking about them raising it from 4.9 percent, and I've seen 26 percent interest.

Credit card companies are raising your interest rates, and they're not letting you know because they simply want to keep you in debt. They want to keep you in debt so that they can continue getting payments from you. It's just a fact to them, and you are their business.

Credit card increases

A client I have would make payments for ten years, and she was making above the minimum payments before working with me. She was going to pay them ten thousand dollars in interest alone on a $13,000 balance. That's the cost of the car I have in my driveway.

They are letting you know that they're raising your credit limit, and they're doing it because now they've made a ton more interest on you without letting you know and now they're they want you to think when you open your wallet, that card has an extra $8,000 because they were so nice to raise my credit limit without me asking.

They want you to use it because they want you to get further into debt. They want you to be in debt for years and years and years to come.

Psychology and budgeting

Psychology can also work when it comes to the way you deal with money yourself. I've had clients come to me and tell me budgeting doesn't work.

They say I tried it, and it doesn't work, then when we dive deep, I find out that the reason why it didn't work isn't that budgeting doesn't work. It's because they approached it from a restrictive place.

Have you ever tried dieting and you restrict calories, and you're like, I'm just gonna count my calories, I'm gonna eat fewer calories. It's a really restrictive diet, but it works.

What happens when you have a cookie or when you go over to your friend's house and she offers you a piece of cake, or you go to a bakery to get some bread, and all of a sudden, one cookie leads to two cookies and next thing you know your pants don't fit.

It's the same way when you're restrictive about money. My approach works with my clients because it's not restrictive. After all, I

come up with a flexible budget.

For example, if my client decides to go out to dinner with her husband, she doesn't have to feel like she's blown it for the month. Instead, she went up a little higher on her restaurant budget, but she's not going to buy clothes that month. What happens is everything balances out.

Be flexible

Flexibility is critical when you're starting to budget because by restricting yourself just like with that diet, you're just gonna blow it, and unfortunately, it's not that your pants don't fit when it comes to money.

It's the fact that now you're going to be frustrated with yourself, you're going to be disappointed with yourself because you tried budgeting for the first time, it didn't work, it blew up, and then what happens is you're going to go backward.

What happens then is you get further into debt, and if you're living above your means now, you're spending more money than you're making again.

Know where your money goes

Everything starts with the way you think and feel about money, but psychology goes hand in hand. So how do you get started?

One thing I can tell you is to track your expenses for an entire month because when you have an overview of where your money's going, then you can start seeing what sabotaging money habits you have that are taking chunks of your income that you never realize.

For example, ATM fees. I see that a lot with my clients. They don't go to their ATM; they go to another bank's ATM and are charged between 10 and 13 dollars per transaction. Could you imagine if you just took out twenty dollars and that twenty dollars cost you thirty-two or thirty-three dollars? That's a sabotaging money habit. You

It's vital if you want to start taking control of your money, you need to know what's happening, and you need to track your expenses for an entire month. Even if it's a dollar lottery ticket, track it, and at least that will start making you feel as though you can handle your finances.

Psychological tricks to save money

Now you know where your money's going, and that's the first step. What psychological tricks do you have to save money? Share them in the comments below.