Bad financial habits are hard to break
The key to sticking with good financial habits 鈥� and not sliding back into bad ones 鈥� is to find a way to hold yourself accountable, Hamm writes.
A woman uses her mobile phone in front of sale signs in the window of a clothes store at a shopping mall in central Sydney.
Daniel Munoz/Reutuers/File
Old routines are hard to break.
It took me almost five years of alternating between 鈥済ood鈥� and 鈥渂ad鈥� behavior to finally curb my bad media buying habits, particularly books.
See, the problem is that I鈥檓 an avid reader and I also view reading as a very worthwhile and valuable hobby. That belief is really easily transposed onto the desire to buy books and have them around, because a bookshelf full of books is just a wonderful thing that I love to see.
To me, even now, a bookshelf with books on it shouts out with the聽possibility聽of all of those books and the stories and ideas contained within. A book to me is like a pair of magic glasses that lets me see the world in a new way; a bookshelf is like a collection of those glasses.聽
The catch is that聽I really don鈥檛 have to own a book to experience that joy of seeing a new world.聽I can get that feeling from the library.
I would remind myself of that and I鈥檇 get into a nice routine of using the library to fuel my reading habit. I鈥檇 stop by there every few weeks, check out some books, and then repeat the cycle.
Then I鈥檇 find myself at home some evening without a new book to read, or I鈥檇 go out somewhere and stop at a bookstore or, even more tempting, I鈥檇 be at home browsing a website that included a link to Amazon.
And I鈥檇 buy a book. Or two.
Before long, I鈥檇 start backsliding into a routine of simply buying the books I鈥檇 want. I鈥檇 blow through my monthly budget for entertainment in a week or so, then wonder where it all went.
Eventually, I鈥檇 resolve myself to getting that habit into check. I鈥檇 work to establish a better routine鈥� and then, after a while, I鈥檇 backslide.
The key to solving this routine of backsliding is to聽find a way to hold yourself accountable.聽You can be accountable to yourself. You can be accountable to others. Ideally, there鈥檚 some of both involved.
The more accountable you are, the easier it is to see the signs that you might be ready to backslide, even if you haven鈥檛 actually done it yet.
For example, I would often find myself browsing on Amazon if I was on the path to backsliding with my book-buying habit. I鈥檇 just click around from book to book, looking for interesting stuff.
It would only take a click or two more to send a box to my doorstep.
I began to recognize this, so I took some active steps to make that more difficult. I removed my credit card information from Amazon. I also used a tool similar to聽聽to block myself from book-buying sites for periods of time.
For me, at least, the longer I鈥檝e gone without backsliding, the stronger other patterns become in my life, erasing the old ones and making it much harder to backslide. When that new pattern is a cheaper one that doesn鈥檛 reduce my happiness or quality of living, then it鈥檚 a huge win.
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