I recently wrote about the “connection” between quality of life and consumer spending, concluding that it’s financially healthy to derive a sense of quality of life from things that aren’t consumer purchases. The post generated a lot of discussion (well over a hundred comments), with many readers seeing both sides of the coin – that it’s great to derive joy from non-consumer sources, but that one shouldn’t be fraught with guilt from making a consumer choice.

I strongly agree with this sentiment, actually. When I do make a consumer purchase, particularly over the last year, I very rarely feel guilty about it in any way. Almost always, the purchase is a net positive, and I walk away glad that I spent the money.

Recently, for example, I went ahead and purchased a portable GPS unit for my wife and I to use. We had been using a GPS program on her cell phone, but the service had a small monthly fee (which we didn’t like at all), a tiny screen, and some serious functionality issues. After our most recent road trip in which we used the GPS phone functionality successfully twice (saving us some money and a potential diaper clean-up in a new car) and failing once (resulting in our son almost wetting himself as we searched for a bathroom while I cursed the awful interface), we decided that we should just cancel her GPS service and get a dedicated unit. I did the research, found a perfect one that fit our needs, tried it out at a local electronics store, and picked it up at a great price. We’re very happy with the purchase.

A few years ago, I would purchase some sort of electronics item or media every week, often in multiples. These purchases would give me a quick blip of joy, but in the end, the items would wind up in a big pile along with a lot of other items that I didn’t have adequate time to enjoy. The net result of this was an empty bank account and a decisive lack of happiness – in fact, I wound up selling most of those items used in order to pay down the debt without having enjoyed them much at all.

Another example: as I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop. About two mornings a month, I take my laptop to a local coffee shop that I adore, pick up a tasty morning treat and a cup of coffee, and sit here in this pleasant environment writing for a few hours. I enjoy it. It feels like a real perk to me and I leave feeling as though my time and money were well spent.

Several years ago, I made a daily stop at a coffee shop for breakfast. I’d sit in there each and every morning, drop $7 on a breakfast sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a paper, and read it without much real joy. It was my routine. It wasn’t joyful – it was just the way I started my day.

With the GPS unit and the irregular coffee shop visits, I get a lot of joy out of the situation. I can see that the expense fulfills me in some way. Since I do it so irregularly, it not only seems special, it retains that positive feeling over time, lifting me up. The irregularity is also a benefit in that it doesn’t add up to an expensive routine – I keep money in my pocket.

Back in the day, with the regular electronics and media purchases and the daily coffee shop visits, I would be spending a lot of money in a way that wasn’t special or particularly enjoyable at all. The coffee shop visits and media purchases were part of the routine of my life – a routine that, when I stepped back and actually thought about what I was doing, wasn’t in line with what I really wanted from my life at all. Even worse, the routine was expensive – it drained a large, regular amount from my checking account every month, like clockwork.

A splurge is healthy every once in a while. It’s an irregular expense – not one that you spend money on every day or even every week. It also fills you with joy when you do it – and you still feel happy about it a day later. In short, you derive quality of life from that purchase.

A habit is never healthy. When an experience (particularly one tied to spending) becomes routine and normal, it should either fulfill a basic need in a simple way or it should be reconsidered. If it doesn’t add genuine value to your life – or if there’s a cheaper option that could add the same value – then you shouldn’t be spending your hard-earned money on it.

The difficulty for many people is that splurges become habits without the person realizing it. Their happy memories of when the coffee shop was a splurge keeps them defending the habit that it has become.

I was very guilty of this. I remember how I used to think about buying new electronics and media purchases. I would think back to the huge treat that it was when I would save up enough money to buy a video game when I was young – and the many hours of happiness I would have playing through it and defeating the game. The memory of that good feeling was often enough to get me to the checkout lane with a new game or a new gadget, without me realizing that I wasn’t actually getting joy from the purchase itself, but from the memory.

I experienced a similar phenomenon with the coffee shop. I’d stop there, step in the door, and the smell of the beans would take me back to some wonderful evenings with college friends in coffee shops. I’d buy the coffee, a sandwich, and a paper, and sit down with them, still coasting on that initial burst of good feelings brought on by the smell. Yet, when I finished up, all I was left with was a memory, one that I could easily trigger myself by smelling coffee beans in a completely different environment. My belly would be filled just as easily with a banana and a cup of tea at work – and that wouldn’t cost anything at all. I was paying $7 a day essentially for the privilege to smell the smells and savor a memory for a bit.

Change came when I realized that I was paying money for my own memories, not for a new joyful experience. My spending habits really revolved around recreating memories and events that I had enjoyed in the past. I wasn’t paying for something I enjoyed in the moment – I was paying to extend the moment. In the end, though, that left both my wallet and my heart empty. The real happiness comes from within – and it doesn’t cost anything.

Take some time and really look at the things you spend money on regularly. Are these things really bringing you happiness – or are they tired routines centered around something you can’t really recapture? You might be shocked to realize how many of your spending choices are really dictated not by your true wants and needs, but by the wants and needs you’ve projected onto those purchases.

This Christmas, I received a 32 GB iPod Touch as a gift – yes, it was the main gift I received this year. Unsurprisingly, after receiving such a cool gadget, I spent much of the last week playing with it – I can now Twitter with it, check my email on it, have a feed reader set up so I can read blog posts anywhere, and tons of other things.

One of the more intriguing features of the iPod Touch (and also the iPhone) is the availability of an “App Store” with just one bump of the finger. With the App Store, you can just push your finger on the screen a few times and download new applications for the device – things like games, productivity tools, and so on. Many of these items are free, but some of them cost a few dollars. Even more tempting – with just a finger push, you can download music from the iTunes Music Store – $0.99 a song.

At first glance, you might think this is really convenient – and it often is. I don’t need to be near my computer to listen to a particular song or download a game – just a couple of finger flicks and it’s downloaded. Sounds nice, right?

The problem with that is it becomes very easy to get very used to the convenience – and download more than you think. I know I certainly ran into this over the last week. Without thinking too much about it, I downloaded two albums and five different paid apps – and the bill totaled $36. Wow.

Thankfully, I received a $25 iTunes gift card that paid for most of these expenses, but it’s actually another sign of how convenient the downloads are – I didn’t actually believe I had already spent the whole gift card until I sat down and actually added up the numbers myself.

Here’s the thing: this is bound to become a more and more prevalent problem as technology advances. I know that my wife feels a similar temptation with the Kindle she’s had for more than a year now. Instead of having to go to the library or to the bookstore, she can just click a few times on her Kindle and download virtually any book she might want to read – but for most books, it costs her a bit. Many cell phones have downloadable applications that provide a similar temptation, too.

Given that I already see myself using my new device on a daily basis, how exactly can I overcome the ultra-convenience of such purchases? Here are the tactics I’ve put in place.

Make it inconvenient to download, period. I did my best to hide the “App Store” and the music store on my iPod Touch. I actually have to put in some effort to find them now, which means that by default I tend to focus on the things that I already have. And that, my friends, saves money.

Don’t browse aimlessly. If I’m playing around with my gadget, there are plenty of things to do besides simply wandering around the shop. Sure, it’s there to be used if you’re searching for something specific, but if you really don’t have anything in mind, don’t use it at all.

Do purchase research in advance. If you’re thinking about downloading something, do your research first. Make sure you’ve figured out exactly what item you want. Listen to album samples on Amazon or somewhere else where it’s far less convenient to purchase. Read reviews of the applications online. Only when you’re sure you know what item you want should you hit the store to download it.

Use the ten second rule. The “ten second rule” has saved me from making impulsive purchases many, many times. It’s simple – each time you go to make a purchase, spend ten seconds asking yourself why you’re making this purchase. Does it actually fulfill a real need? Couldn’t you find this same item somewhere else for less money? Do you really even want it, or is it just impulsive? Why do you want it? After ten seconds of such reflection, it becomes pretty easy to not purchase that album or that silly game.

Budget for anything unnecessary. All of us have different fun things that we enjoy, but when such enjoyments become very convenient, it’s easy to spend more than we think. The best way to combat this is to create a very careful “entertainment” budget for yourself. Allot a certain amount that you’re allowed to spend each month on entertainment purchases and keep careful track of your spending. I often use an Excel spreadsheet for this when I’m keeping tabs on a specific spending area. This way, when you make an impulse purchase, it’s not going to create a major money issue as long as you keep track of it.

Appreciate the freebies. Interestingly enough, most of the best things I’ve downloaded for my iPod touch were absolutely free: Twitterific, The Weather Channel, Stanza (a book reader), Pandora, and Remote were all free and I use them all a ton. This actually applies to other aspects of life – I usually go to Sam’s Club once a week for grocery shopping and I appreciate all the free food samples that are there as they usually make up my Saturday lunch, for one, and for another, one of our favorite activities when the snow isn’t on the ground is going to the park a few blocks from our home where there’s a ton of playground equipment and an excellent free disc golf course.

Good luck with your impulsive spending!

Note: I am aware that the image above is actually of an iPhone instead of an iPod touch. However, they look very similar and I simply elected to re-use one of my favorite images.

Over the next few days, we’re going to take a look at five common New Year’s resolutions that people often adopt for their finances, evaluate some of the traps that people fall into with regards to that resolution, and come up with some real actions that can turn a challenging New Year’s resolution into a success.

“I resolve to spend less money in 2009.” The money diet, in other words. Many, many people make a resolution similar to this for the coming year – and they usually see some nice success with it over the first month or so.

Then it all falls apart and by the break of spring, the resolution is left in the trash can and the bills are piling up again.

What makes this resolution so hard to keep? It’s the same reason why resolutions related to losing weight tend not to work – they require a significant personal change, and significant personal changes are never easy. Humans are creatures of habit, and most people are quite comfortable with the routines in their life even if they dream of different things. Radically changing those habits will almost always be met with resistance, like a stretching rubber band, and eventually we weaken and our old habits snap right back into place.

So how can a person actually make a “spend less” resolution work? Here are some tactics that are well worth trying.

Find inspiration. What are you really doing this for? It’s easy to give the trite answer and say that you need to start getting rid of credit card debt or that you need to start saving money. While those may be compelling reasons, they’re not inspirational. They don’t truly drive you to make changes.

Instead, think of things this way. What would happen to your life if you didn’t make these changes? Would you eventually lose the things you really value in your life? Would you become a burden on others? Explore those questions carefully.

Likely, you’ll start coming back to some common themes in the answers to those questions. It might be that you’d lose something you dream of – you’d never be able to have that dream house, for example. It might also be that you’re not able to adequately care for something or someone in your life – your children, for example.

That’s your inspiration. Once you figure out why you’re really doing this, use that inspiration as leverage. Put reminders of that inspiration all around. Put a picture of that inspiration in your wallet – wrap your credit card in that picture. Whenever you’re tempted to spend, think about that thing that inspires you and ask yourself if that purchase is really important after all.

Focus on just one aspect of your spending at a time. Much like a diet, many people tend to dive into cutting spending with a short-term religious-like fervor, cutting every dime of frivolous spending.

Much like a diet, this works wonders in the short run. Your spending drops significantly and you feel really good about it. Eventually, though, you begin to feel the resistance – and eventually, you lose your grip and fall back into most of those old routines. Right back where you started.

Instead of attacking fifteen different bad habits at once, though, just focus on one bad spending habit. Do you buy a coffee every morning? Focus on nothing but cutting down (or cutting out) that cost. Do you often stop at your favorite store and spend more than you should? Focus on cutting down on those trips. And let everything else go. Don’t try to make radical changes in other aspects of your life. Just cut down on this one thing.

Watch out for “replacement spending.” When you cut down in one area, it’s often easy for that saved money to pop up in your spending somewhere else. If you stop buying that daily coffee, for example, you might feel okay buying a new book each week, and then you’re right back where you started.

One very effective way to get around this is to adopt two rules: the ten second rule and the thirty day rule.

The ten second rule simply says that any time you pick up an item in a store with the intent to buy it, spend ten seconds asking yourself whether you really need this item. Do you even really want it? Couldn’t you find it cheaper elsewhere? Isn’t there another version that costs less? Why are you really thinking about buying it? Most of the time, you’ll find yourself putting that item back on the shelf.

The thirty day rule simply says that every time you consider a purchase over a certain dollar amount (say, $15), you simply write down the item you were considering and wait thirty days to see if you still want it. If you do, then buy it. Most likely, you’ll either realize you don’t actually want it all that much or you’ll completely forget about it. Either way, it cuts your spending.

Add a new aspect every month or so. So how do you progress from here? Once you’ve created a new spending pattern in your life – say, eliminating the daily coffee run – and haven’t replaced it with anything new, you can select another specific pattern and tackle it. Maybe you eat out too much. Maybe you spend too much on birthday gifts for others instead of thinking of thoughtful but cheaper gifts. Maybe you like to buy clothes a bit too often.

Every month or so, pick a new bad habit and tackle it alone. Use the techniques above – inspiration, the ten second rule, the thirty day rule – to tackle the difficult habit. Eventually, you’ll begin to replace the bad habit with a better one, and then you can move on to yet another habit.

The change will be slow. This method won’t create earth-shattering changes overnight. However, it has a much higher likelihood of slowly bringing dramatic change to your life so that next New Year’s, you aren’t making another tired “I’ll spend less” resolution. Instead, you’ll be celebrating a whole new you.

Recently, I happened to be leafing through Elizabeth Warren’s worthwhile personal finance book, All Your Worth, when I stumbled across an interesting statement on page 244: “If things get really tight and you don’t have enough to cover all your expenses, pay the most important bills first.”

Obviously, Warren intended this advice to be given to someone who’s really struggling to pay all of their bills – and it’s great advice for that situation. Make absolutely sure your essentials are covered – your home, your transportation to work, your food. Those are the things that you need and thus they take priority over everything else.

But my mind tends to work in the opposite direction sometimes. When I read that passage, my mind immediately moved to the least important bill.

Play along with me for a moment. What’s the least important bill you pay each month? It’s not that easy to answer right off the bat, so I encourage you to just make a list of all of your monthly bills. Your mortgage or rent. Your car payment. Credit card bills. Phone service. Food. Electricity. Internet service. Netflix. Maybe even your World of Warcraft bill.

Got that list? Now, cross off the ones that cover your life’s necessities, such as your mortgage, your food, your electric bill, and your car payment. Next, cross off the bills that, if left unpaid, will detrimentally affect your other bills, such as your credit cards and other debts.

What you’re left with are your nonessentials, things like your cell phone, your Netflix subscription, your cable subscription, and other such things. Now, rank them. Which is the most important to you? What’s the next one?

Eventually, you’ll be down to one bill – your least important bill. And now comes the soul searching. Do you really use whatever that bill pays for? Does that service really provide any value for your life? Could you not easily replace that bill by regularly visiting the library or getting a digital converter box or finding a non-subscription game to play?

Then think about this fact. If you cancel a $20 monthly bill and instead apply that $20 to your credit card bill (that has a balance of $5,000, a 12% interest rate, and a $100 minimum payment), you’d turn 302 payments of $100 a pop into 55 payments of $120 a pop (I used the minimum payment calculator to get this number). Your credit card balance would disappear in about four and a half years instead of twenty five years, just by getting rid of that Netflix account.

What about my least important bill? My least important monthly bill is easily my emusic account. In the past, I’d already eliminated my Netflix subscription, my World of Warcraft subscription, and downgraded both my cable bill and our cell phone bill. Even though I get a lot of enjoyment from emusic, I think of it this way: if I take the value of my emusic subscription and apply it to my remaining student loan, I’d shave several months off of the repayment period, bringing debt freedom that much closer.

I’ve already saved $50 a month shaving away some of my “least important” bills – applying that savings to overpayments on my wife’s student loan (along with a healthy dose of our debt snowball) eliminated my wife’s student loan almost six months earlier than planned (and years before it was finally due).

Will I eliminate emusic? I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll downgrade or eliminate it. I listen to music roughly nine hours per weekday as I always have music playing in the background – and almost all of it comes straight from emusic. In other words, after cutting away some of the fatty monthly bills, I’ve reached the point where I’m starting to get close to the meat of the matter.

But without that consideration, I’d still be paying a student loan bill that’s now paid off. And I’d be paying it for quite a while yet.

Spend some time thinking about your least important bill. Is it actually important enough to hinder your debt repayment plans or your investing goals?

I’ve watched one of my childhood heroes throw his life away to a methamphetamine addiction. I remember him surging with vitality, going to school full time while simultaneously working at a full time job to make ends meet. He had the future open to him – college scholarships, a killer work ethic, and a quiet mannerism that made people who barely knew him trust that he could get the job done. Five years later, he was broke and jobless and reduced to making meth in an abandoned shack.

Another person I know lost his home, all three of his cars, his wife, and his children due to an addiction to gambling. He’d constantly bet more and more and more, believing he could turn around the losses with just one big score, until he had lost everything he had ever valued in his life, spending the night attempting to sleep in a casino bathroom.

These two people lost everything they had to their addictions. They once had all of the assets and opportunities that could be afforded to them, but in each case an addiction to something drug them down.

Any addiction is a danger to long term personal finance stability. If you have a compulsion to commit a non-vital behavior, particularly one that requires you to lay out money, it’s a massive risk, not only to you, but to everyone around you.

Addiction counseling is something I confess to knowing very little about, so I spent some time scouring for resources both online and off. Below are some of the tactic summaries I’ve discovered (while I’m providing links to online sources, there are many similar offline resources available at the local public library).

If You’re Addicted

The best summary of dealing with one’s own addictions came from a nonprofit site dealing with teenage addiction sponsored by the Nemours Foundation. The site lists countless signs to self-identify an addiction, then offers some excellent solutions that really sum up many of the tips out there – the tips focus on drug addiction, but the principles apply to all addictions:

Tell your friends about your decision to stop using drugs. Your true friends will respect your decision. This might mean that you need to find a new group of friends who will be 100% supportive. Unless everyone decides to kick their drug habit at once, you probably won’t be able to hang out with the friends you did drugs with before.

Ask your friends or family to be available when you need them. You may need to call someone in the middle of the night just to talk. If you’re going through a tough time, don’t try to handle things on your own — accept the help your family and friends offer.

Accept invitations only to events that you know won’t involve drugs or alcohol. Going to the movies is probably safe, but you may want to skip a Friday night party until you’re feeling more secure. Plan activities that don’t involve drugs. Go to the movies, try bowling, or take an art class with a friend.

Have a plan about what you’ll do if you find yourself in a place with drugs or alcohol. The temptation will be there sometimes, but if you know how you’re going to handle it, you’ll be OK. Establish a plan with your parents or siblings so that if you call home using a code, they’ll know that your call is a signal you need a ride out of there.

Remind yourself that having an addiction doesn’t make you bad or weak. If you fall back into old patterns (backslide) a bit, talk to an adult as soon as possible. There’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it’s important to get help soon so that all of the hard work you put into your recovery is not lost.

The real key here is to find a support network of people who can help you through this. Ask for help, even if it’s hard to admit your weakness. The truth is that the people who care about you most will be relieved that you’re realizing your problems and will be extremely happy to help you with your challenges.

If You Care for Someone Who’s Addicted

The advice here seems much more varied. Some sources seem to advocate an intervention and confrontation, while others encourage not confronting the addict.

The one thing that the sources do agree on is that you shouldn’t ignore it. Universally, it seems to at least be a good idea (though some say it’s not the best route) to tell the person that you’re worried about them, you care about them, and any time they want to talk, they can talk to you. You don’t have to even directly mention the issue, just let that person know very clearly that you are available to them if they need you.

At the same time, it also seems to be universal that you don’t support their addiction in any way. Cut off their financial supplies in any way you have to, but provide them with alternatives that take them away from the addiction. For example, if they come to you and ask for cash to get some food, say no but invite them to come over and eat with you.

No matter your position, addiction can be a very serious issue. It can drain your finances and everything else you hold of value in your life. If you’re recognizing a problem of your own, or know of a problem that someone else has, don’t ignore it. Address it now, for your future’s sake.

In the “bad old days,” I used to respond to a bad day by spending money on something. The immediate perk of acquiring something new was usually enough to raise my spirits at least a little, and that little raise in spirit would be enough to help me finish off the day and rise for a new one.

What I came to find out is that this was just another sign of a spending addiction. I was not much different than an alcoholic, using spending to get through the bad days as well as the good.

The solution to this was simple. I started identifying little actions that improved my mood without spending money. Then, I simply would try one (or a small handful) of these actions at the end of a bad day and use those for my mood lifter, without the unnecessary need to spend.

Admittedly, these little actions vary a lot from person to person, but I found that the following worked well for me.

Going for a short jog I would do it just enough so that I would be sweating well and breathing heavy – no need to really push it. That amount of jogging gets my endorphins running, lifting my mood.

Playing with my children If I’ve had a bad day and I’m stressed out, few things improve the situation more than just setting things aside and devoting some uninterrupted time to my children. I’ll wrestle in the living room with my son, tossing him in the air and letting him leap on my back. I’ll hold my daughter and try to eke a smile or a giggle out of her. Or I’ll hold them both and read them a book, my daughter staring at the bright colors and my son trying to name everything on the page.

Looking at my “favorite pictures” I keep a folder of my favorite pictures on my laptop, mostly consisting of pictures of my children. If my children aren’t available to play with, I use this folder.

Eating something rich in soluble fiber, vitamin D, or folate My favorite of these is a small bowl of oatmeal, but canned salmon is very good, as are lentils. These are all natural mood lifters that exist in food – their effects are subtle, but they often amplify the other things I can be doing.

Meditating I like to go to the downstairs bedroom, before my wife or children have arrived home, and just sit on the bed and let everything fade away. I just sit there calmly, focus on my breathing, and try to avoid thinking about anything at all. Sometimes, I’ll slip into a state that’s something like sleep – whenever I do that, I almost always emerge in a better mood.

Talking to an old friend or a loved family member I have a small list of people who really elevate my mood almost every time I talk to them. Usually, when I’m down, I’ll carry on a conversation with one of them and everything begins to seem better.

One factor that elevates things over the long run is realizing I’m not spending the money. After several times of substituting spending money for one or two of these activities, there’s suddenly more money in my savings account and I suddenly feel a lot better about things.

When I write on The Simple Dollar, I often write about tips and techniques that I’ve found useful for saving and investing money. I’ll talk about the big things – like always spending less than you earn – but I also list things like ten ways to avoid financially responsible buying.

I have very little problem managing the big things. My debt is steadily going downwards, I’m starting an investing plan, and I’ve got most of the things I need to pay set up automatically. Even better, I’ve found lots of ways to minimize my spending so that right now, we’re actually spending less than half of our income on the required stuff, like food and minimum bill payments.

Where I tend to stumble instead is on the little things.

I’ll go to the store and pick up a game for my DS, justifying the unnecessary splurge by thinking to myself, “I am doing such a good job! This little thing won’t make a difference!”

I’ll go splurge and spend $40 on a bottle of wine, telling myself that it is the perfect complement to a meal I’ve spent an hour and a half preparing.

I’ll buy an expensive, high quality pocket notebook (for my idea notebook) rather than a simple Mead one that does the job just fine.

Now, many people would react to all this by saying you work hard, you deserve it and you save a huge amount of money each month, these splurges won’t really matter and what’s the point of life without those little things we enjoy.

The problem is that those little mis-steps are the ones that really add up.

Rather than buying a new DS game, I could either actually finish some of the ones I own or trade one of my unplayed ones online, thus saving me $25.

Rather than buying a $40 bottle of wine, I could go to the winery down the road from where I live and buy a perfectly good bottle for $10, not only saving me $30 but also supporting a local business.

Instead of buying that expensive pocket notebook, I could save $4 and buy the little Mead notebook – it’s just for sketching ideas, anyway.

None of those alternate moves deny me any deep pleasure in life. They just save some money and reduce the impact that my immediate needs have on my long term future.

Yet, I still regularly make these little mistakes. I have a $40 bottle of wine sitting in the wine rack right now, waiting to accompany some homemade lasagna. I have a pile of DS games (and a few Wii games), many of which I’ve not played through entirely. My pocket notebook is currently not a Mead (though I need a new one soon).

It often seems as though I can see the boulders and can get past them, but I trip up on the pebbles.

So what can I do to get past this? The most powerful technique I’ve found is reminding myself a lot of what the big picture really is. I keep a few items in my wallet near my credit card so that whenever I go to pull it out, I see what I’m sacrificing to make that purchase.

Even with that, though, it’s still a constant challenge to overcome the little things.

When most people think of giving up a habit, they think of quitting smoking or something to that effect. However, there are a lot of little habits that people pick up in their daily routines that they rarely even think about.

At the start of the year, I made a concerted effort to give up some of my regular habits, and I found that I made very good progress in giving up six of them. Here they are, along with how I did it and how much I saved.

The daily breakfast at the coffee shop – bagel and large drink This would set me back about $7 every single morning. I still have this on rare occasion, but now it feels like a treat instead of a necessity. Instead, I drink some water in the morning and eat breakfast at home, usually some toast. Healthier and far, far cheaper. Savings: $25 a week.

Three or four music albums a week I used to download and buy music like crazy. Over the last six months, I committed myself to listening only to the huge amount of music I already had, going through it and discovering what I really liked and what I didn’t. That cut my music purchases down to about an album a month. Savings: $9 a week.

Wandering around the bookstore three nights a week I replaced this with about two sessions at the library and a heavy use of their “wait list” for various books. Since I’d buy a new book about once a week, this is saving quite a lot. Savings: $10 a week.

Golf It’s been pretty easy to trim this nearly-weekly habit to nothing at all. I haven’t actually played a round this year, which is unbelievable compared to previous summers. I have been hanging out with the usual people I golf with, though, so no real social loss. Savings: $45 a week

Vacation Every summer for the last several, I went on an expensive vacation (London, Seattle, Las Vegas, northern Minnesota). It began to seem completely routine. This summer, I moved into a house – much less expensive – and am taking some time off to spend time with visiting family. Savings: $1,000 or so

Road trips Part of my routine used to be multiple long road trips each month, several hours in length. I’ve made a concerted effort to cut down on these this year and the gas savings alone has been tremendous. Savings: $100 a month

Doing the math on those numbers puts me in the range of saving about $4,000 so far this year, enough to fully fund a Roth IRA.

What’s the key here? Look at the things you regularly do and try to trim or eliminate the ones that gobble money.