If you are like me. then you don’t spend much money during the week. You’re too busy MAKING money to have time spending any money. But the weekend is my financial weakness. I eat out more and I spend money on crap that I don’t need. I am s\ure that I am not the only one that is guilty of this, because it’s natural spend more money on the weekend when you aren’t working and you want to relax and have fun. However, if you have financial goals like getting out of debt, saving for retirement, or saving for large purchases like a house or a car, your weekend binge spending is probably hindering those goals. Here are a few ways to curb your weekend spending.
- Instead of going out to watch the game, have friends over. Ask everyone to bring something. It’s so easy to drop $50 to $100 just by going out to eat and drink for a football game. You’ll save much of that money by staying at home but having fun with some friends.
- Don’t go shopping without a purpose. We get in so much trouble if we go to Target without a list or to the mall just to “window shop”. We always end up buying stuff for the house that we don’t need or clothes that we didn’t budget for.
- Make good use of free recreation. Go to a park or look in the newspaper for free events going on around the city. Use the outdoors, it’s free!
- Take your credit cards out of your wallet. If you do go out during the weekend, don’t take your credit cards with you. It’s too tempting to spend money that you don’t have.
- Plan out your weekend. Planning can easily help you save money, because then you won’t fill in spots of boredom with spending money. We like to plan one meal for eating out. So if we say, we’re going out to eat Saturday night, then we know that’s our meal out, so we’ll need to eat in for the rest of the meals. It works pretty well.
Do you find yourself overspending on the weekends? What do you do to stop yourself from spending so much?
