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.

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.

“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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Was that $3 an effective use of money? Of course not. A $3 candy bar? It was very good chocolate, but it was $3 that basically disappeared in a few minutes. That $3 could have helped with the grocery bill or any number of other things; instead, we giggled and munched and the money was gone.

The $3 alone isn’t that big of a deal, but repeated over time, it really does add up. Let’s say I bought that same candy bar once a week – that adds up to $156 a year, enough to make a double payment once a year on my student loan and get it paid off years earlier.

The real value of the situation, though, wasn’t in the routine of it – it was a spontaneous moment of enjoyment with my family. It is those little moments, simple things like sitting in a car in the rain and sharing a candy bar and singing to music and laughing, that will be the things I remember in the future about this time, where the three of us were living together in that tiny apartment and he was in his toddler years, just discovering the world.

Was it worth $3? The chocolate bar wasn’t worth it, but the memory of it will be. Even now, I can close my eyes and see the raindrops bouncing on the hood, my bad falsetto singing along on the radio, a bit of chocolate on my son’s lips as he smiles enormously, and my wife just grabbing my hand and squeezing it. Those things were free, but they’re so great that they’re worth any price.

The value was in the uniqueness of the moment. By simply doing that – or something like it – every week, it goes from being a great, fun memory I’ll have of my wife and my son to something ordinary and plain. Trying to recreate that moment is really futile – I just enjoy them as they come along.

So what’s really important here? Those little special moments that cost a few dollars are fine – they are truly the spice of life. The trouble comes in when these special times start becoming routine – not only does the cost become regular, but it ceases to be special and becomes ordinary.

The best approach for trimming required spending is to simply walk through all of the required expenses and look for ways to lower that number. Here are forty techniques you can use to do just that, divided up into several sensible categories.

Automobile

Automobiles are money pits – they constantly go down in value, devour fuel by the gallon, and often require all manner of repairs and maintenance work. How can we reduce the cost of automobiles in our monthly budget?

Use public transportation If you have an option that enables you to ride to regular destinations (such as work, the store, or a shopping center) instead of using your automobile, you can save quite a bit of money on gas and maintenance by just dropping a few coins on the bus or the rail system and leaving the car at home (or parking it at a station). In fact, during my earlier days, I exclusively used public transportation and it was painful to add an automobile to my monthly finances.

Sell an automobile If an automobile is sitting in your driveway or garage and isn’t used, consider selling it. If nothing else, the insurance expense will go away, and if you can use the money from the sale to pay it off or, better yet, pocket some of the money, even better.

Carpool If you have an opportunity to share a ride to and from work with someone else, that not only significantly reduces wear and tear on your car and gas expenses, it enables you to use any carpooling lanes on the commute, which almost always save time when commuting and allows you to drive at a speed that .

Keep the tires on your automobiles inflated properly Once a month, stop by a local gas station that offers free air and check the air pressure in your car tires, then fill each one to the maximum recommended amount as stated in your manual. This improves gas mileage by one percent for every two PSI of air you are able to add to your tires.

Debt Reduction

Any opportunity you have to reduce your debt will obviously help in your monthly payments, but many people don’t have the cash available to eliminate debt. There are other options for reducing your monthly debt load, however…

Refinance your home and/or automobile Contact some lending institutions and inquire about rates. You might be able to get into a situation that reduces your monthly debt payments without significantly increasing your overall cost in the long term.

Consolidate your student loans Don’t hold out for a hope of better rates to consolidate your loans, especially if your current rates are quite high. Spend the time to find a good loan consolidation option and it will pay off every single month.

Get a small personal loan through your local credit union This is a great option if you’ve borrowed money to make a smaller purchase, such as furniture or a small home improvement project, and you’re finding the interest rates uncomfortable. The perfect place to look for a helping hand here is your local credit union, which will often offer small personal loans at a nice rate if your credit is solid.

Request a credit card rate reduction If you’ve got a decent amount on your credit card, call up your credit card company and request a rate reduction. If they won’t go for it, get a 0% balance transfer onto another card. The key here, though, is to stop buying on credit until your financial situation is healthy.

Sign up for automatic debt repayment plans Many installment plans, particularly those with student loans, offer an interest rate reduction if you sign up for an automatic plan. You should never pass these up – not only do they save money automatically each month, they’re also incredibly convenient. If you have any installment payments (particularly student loan debt), see if such an offer is available to you.

Sell unused items Dig through your closet and look for items that you no longer use that may have value, then use that cash directly to eliminate debts, thus reducing your monthly debt load. I did this myself with a number of items when my debt load became almost unmanageable.

Energy

We all face a continual onslaught of energy costs, especially as we use more and more electronic devices. Luckily, technology has brought us a few effective ways to reduce costs as well.

Install CFLs Compact fluorescent light bulbs are receiving a big push right now and their advantages are great: a longer lifespan and significantly less electrical usage. Stick with the name brands for now, even at a premium – my entire house switched to GE CFLs more than a year ago and I have yet to replace a single one. A tip: when comparing bulbs, use the lumens number to compare bulbs, not the equivalent wattages – the lumens indicate the actual amount of light emitted by the bulb. Remember also that under normal usage (4 hours a day) and normal electrical rates ($0.10 per kilowatt hour), replacing a 75 watt bulb with a 20 watt CFL saves $0.66 per month. Multiply that by all the bulbs in your house to see how much you’ll save every month.

Install a programmable thermostat A programmable thermostat allows you to automatically alter the heating and cooling of your home when you’re not at home, when you’re asleep, and so on, saving significantly on your heating and cooling bills.

Unplug all unused electrical devices Are there any electrical devices around the house that stay plugged in, but that you rarely use? Most electric devices use a small amount of electricity constantly, a phantom charge. To eliminate that usage, unplug the items.

Utilize timers and power strips Along those lines, consider utilizing power strips and power timers to turn electrical devices on and off. A power strip with a switch on it, when turned off, blocks the phantom charge on those devices; a timer can automatically turn off the charge going to a power strip (or anything plugged into it) at a certain time each night. This is a great way to eliminate phantom charge on your home electronic equipment at night.

Install a blanket for your hot water heater and reduce the temperature In many homes, the hot water heater is a major energy drain; the water is kept hotter than most people ever use, plus the heat is constantly lost to the environment, meaning you have to burn more energy than ever to keep the water so hot. Solve both problems by dropping the temperature down to 125-130 degrees Fahrenheit (around 60 degress Celsius) and also installing a blanket on your water heater to keep in the heat – a blanket can pay for itself in about a year.

Air seal your home Air sealing your home can prevent drafts, which can often cause the loss of cool air in the summer and the loss of warm air in the winter, both of which can increase your housing costs. Here’s a great guide to this weekend project from the EERE.

Entertainment

Many people look at entertainment as the first thing to cut when trying to trim costs, but they often forget to look at the regular expenditures that slowly eat away at your financial foundation month in and month out. Here are some things to consider that you may have overlooked before.

Cancel club memberships Look at things like a health club, a country club, and so on. How often do you really use these services? If you’re using a gym membership less than once a week or a country club membership less than once a month, you’re likely throwing away money.

Reduce or eliminate your cable bill For many people, this advice is beyond the pale, but it’s worth looking at. Perhaps you could trim back on your premium channel selection and just go with basic cable, or perhaps you could even eliminate your cable bill entirely – it will also help with electricity costs because you won’t be watching television as much and you’ll suddenly find you have much more free time.

Look for inexpensive entertainment options Do you utilize the local library? Do you attend local community events like municipal band concerts and so on? Are you aware of local volunteer groups and organizations? Your community often offers many options for inexpensive or free entertainment of all kinds – you don’t have to have a big entertainment budget each month.

Strongly reduce or eliminate travel We live very far from our extended families, so we are aware of the costs of travel. We’ve found that by being selective about what we travel to – and also open to inviting people to visiting us – we signifcantly cut down on travel expenses.

Cancel newspaper and magazine subscriptions If you get a magazine or newspaper in the mail but simply don’t read it, cancel that subscription when it comes up for renewal, no matter how much you “like” the magazine. An unread subscription is nothing more than expensive clutter.

Look at and consider reducing/eliminating other regular paid services Look at services like Netflix – are you really getting $19.95 a month out of these services? If not, just drop the service and look for other options, like a local rental store. What about satellite radio? If you use that but find yourself not using it or just sticking with the same things you listen to on regular radio (like NPR or top forty), then cancel the service.

Food

My favorite room in the house is the kitchen, but for many people it just seems more convenient to eat out, even though it’s incredibly expensive and not as much of a time saver as you might think. Consider these options.

Cook (and pack) your own meals at home When you cook at home, make plenty so that you can freeze some of it for future meals and, even better, take some of it as leftovers to work, drastically reducing the cost of the typical workplace lunch. Some people may shy away from leftovers, but there are some secrets to making any leftovers as good as the original.

Reduce or eliminate eating out or getting take-out Take-out and dining out can be a huge timesaver for a busy family, but the expense can be tremendous – and it often doesn’t save much time, either. Instead, look at other options for dining at home: prepare lots of meals at once and freeze them for easy cooking later, focus on simple recipes, and choose recipes that utilize the fresh produce in season in your area.

Buy nonperishable items in bulk Many people never even bother to look at some of the larger packages of nonperishable items – they think it’s just too much. Try looking at the cost per unit of all of the sizes and choose the one that’s the best deal; often, it is the big bulky package, but that just means you won’t be buying it again for a long time. Spread out over months and over a lot of items (think of all of the nonperishables in your home – food is just the beginning), this can add up to a lot of trimmed fat.

Start a garden Vegetable gardening is a splendid hobby that can often turn a profit if done well. Focus on vegetables that are easy to grow and produce abundant fruit, like tomatoes, and learn how to store the excess through such processes as canning. Opening up a jar of tomatoes in the winter that were grown by you in the summer and canned in the fall is a wonderful experience – and it can really help with trimming the food bill.

Buy generic Many products (not just food) are available in a store-brand or generic form for significantly less money – quite often with the name brand, you’re paying for their advertising budget with the higher cost. Look carefully at the ingredients in generic and name-brand products and if they’re the same, go with the generic one on a regular basis, which will consistently trim money from your shopping bill.

Insurance

We all have insurance to protect against the unexpected, but when we overpay for insurance, we leave ourselves vulnerable in a different way by stretching our budget too thin. Look into these options for ways to reduce your insurance premiums.

Downgrade your health insurance Ask at work about the various options available to you that might reduce your insurance costs, and don’t neglect to look into family options if you have children – if you do, all working members of the household should look at family coverage.

Shop for homeowner and auto insurance If you haven’t shopped around for homeowner and auto insurance lately, now’s a good time to get a few quotes, especially if your credit is strong. If you can save a substantial amount and maintain your current coverage, it’s well worth switching to another provider, but give your current one a chance to match.

Switch to term life insurance If you’re paying for whole life insurance or universal life insurance, look strongly at a term package instead. The cost per year will be significantly cheaper and at the end of the term, your life insurance needs will likely be far less than they are right now.

Raise your deductibles If you’re paying a large premium in order to have a small deductible, you might want to consider switching that, particularly if your claims are infrequent. Raising your deductible can often significantly reduce your annual premiums, easing the monthly strain on your bills.

Other

There are many other areas of your budget that can also afford a bit of fat trimmed from them. Let’s look at a few more possibilities for lowering your regular expenses.

Reduce or eliminate your cell phone bill Ask yourself how much you really use your cell phone; if it’s not all that much, look at perhaps getting a prepaid phone with a small number of minutes on it for those emergency situations when you actually use it. If you do use it a lot, look at the features you’re paying for on your bill and see if you can trim any of those.

Move to a less-expensive child care option We pay a significant amount for our child care, but there are other good options available to us. Look at other child care options in your area carefully and see if it might not be worth moving to a less expensive scenario. If you’re lucky enough to live near grandparents, they might be able to assist with part-time child care as an opportunity to bond with their grandchildren.

Reduce or eliminate organized child activities My own children aren’t old enough yet to be in organized activities with costs, but my nieces and nephews certainly are and the bills can really add up. Look for activities that your child is sincerely interested in (if you don’t know, ask them what they really like) and focus on those while cutting back on the rest.

Eliminate services (housecleaning, landscaping, etc.) If you hire out household services to others, consider trimming back or eliminating them. Instead, put aside some time each week to do them yourself – not only will you save money, but you’ll find that many activities can get the whole family involved (like housecleaning).

Reduce (temporarily) your giving at church/synagogue/etc. If your budget is bursting at the seams, consider cutting back on your giving at your religious service. If this spiritually troubles you, talk to the leader of your religious group about the issue – they’ll usually be very supportive of this if you need some time to get your own house in order.

Strongly reduce or eliminate clothes shopping I have a close friend who insists on having a significant monthly clothes budget. I challenged her to trim her spending in half and instead focus more on looking for bargains – and she’s never looked back. If you need to dress well for work, don’t let that slide, but putting in some effort to look for a bargain can often pay huge dividends. Even better – have a moratorium on shopping for new clothes until you really need something new.

Reduce grooming expenses Instead of having your hair cut and styled weekly, cut back to every other week. If you have your nails done twice a month, cut back to monthly, or have manicure parties where you do it at home with your friends instead. If you buy expensive shampoos, look at lower cost options. It doesn’t have to cost a truckload to keep up appearances.

Reduce or eliminate consumable habits (smoking, alcohol, etc.) Any consumable habit, whether it be smoking or excessive drinking, can be a constant drain on a budget without any real benefit. Give the habit a kick in the pants and your wallet will breathe a serious sigh of relief.

Move to a less expensive area Many people leave this option out when looking at trimming their budget, but if you can find work in another area, it may be worth considering. Look around at other areas of the country where you can find employment, see what your salary would be there, and look at the housing costs. Quite often, you’ll find yourself significantly ahead by looking at areas like Minneapolis rather than areas like San Francisco, even at a significantly lower salary.

Using even a few of these options can really open up some breathing room in a budget, enabling you to break free of debt and chase your dreams.

As I’ve mentioned on here a few times, I’ve wanted a Nintendo Wii for a while and seeing lots of people getting one drove the desire to a fever pitch. There were about six left after the people in line got theirs and so I could have easily reached out and gotten one. We were at a family event, so I could easily visualize taking it back, getting it out, and playing Wii Sports with my sisters-in-law and other family members.

What kept me from doing it, you ask? Here’s what I did instead.

I took a walk around the store. Instead of just grabbing one and rushing for the checkouts as my gut told me to do, I decided instead to take a walk around the store, think about the item, and find the other thing I was intending to purchase (namely, the baby wipes). This gave me a “cooling off” period to get my rampant consumerism in check.

I considered the other things I could do with that $250. I could buy my son a very nice toddler bed with that money. It would buy a piece of furniture or two for the new house. That money could also be used to really stock the pantry when we move with all sorts of cooking supplies that would not only feed another hobby of mine but would feed my family as well. It could pay for part of a lawnmower, too. In short, I thought of many better uses for the money than buying a Nintendo Wii.

I seriously evaluated how much I would use the Wii if I did buy it. In truth, not all that much. It would be a complete blast when friends and family were visiting and I could see my wife and I playing bowling and boxing in the evenings, but other than that it would just sit and gather dust. I can think of many other fun things to do with my wife in the evening and also with visiting family and friends than merely playing with a $250 toy.

I decided not to discuss the purchase with my wife until after I left the store. I didn’t pick up my cell phone and call her because I think there’s some chance she would just tell me to get it, especially since The Simple Dollar is doing well. I knew that if I left the store, then discussed it with her, the odds of spending that unnecessary money were much less, but I could still express my desire to own one.

I gave myself a much lighter reward for making the correct but difficult choice. What was that? I ordered a few purely fun books from PaperBackSwap after we returned from the trip. It didn’t cost me anything, but it was fun and it felt like a reward after being “good” and not spending money – this reward didn’t violate the spirit of not buying the Wii, either, because it didn’t cost anything.

Just a year ago, I would have just grabbed the Wii and headed for the exits. I guess this experience is a clear sign of a change in financial direction.

In March of this year, I actually managed to spend less than 50% of my take-home after-tax income. I used the rest of that money to make a large payment on my student loan debt, do some investing, save for a home down payment, and build up my emergency fund even more. In April, I won’t quite get there because of an income tax payment (which I was able to simply write a check for without blinking), but if you eliminate that tax payment, I could have possibly been under 40% of my take-home spent.

The end result of this is that I’m undergoing a profound change in how I perceive the requirements of my life. This has manifested itself in a ton of ways, some simple and some profound. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

More lifestyle choices Last night when my wife and I were taking a serious look at our financial state and we realized that a lot of doors are now open to us that were simply not even worth considering before. It is now realistic for my wife to quit her job and become a stay-at-home mom; we could not have done that before. It’s even somewhat realistic for me to quit my job and become a stay-at-home dad.

Less insecurity about employment Because of that financial freedom, I no longer have to be constantly stressed out about work. I don’t have to go to work and walk on eggshells to make sure I don’t get “downsized” or “outsourced.” I no longer nod my head in agreement and keep my mouth shut during meetings when something doesn’t make sense – I find out what the real story is. Instead of simply following protocols, doing what I’m told, and twiddling my thumbs otherwise, I dig in and fix interesting and worthwhile problems. My work identity is transforming rapidly – and to my benefit. Even more interesting, I recently flat-out told my boss why the change occurred and he was completely dumbfounded.

Less stress about life I’m no longer worried about any bills, nor does the thought of a financial crisis really worry me. I used to have a hard time sleeping at night because of the financial stress, and my temper was also much shorter than it has been as of late. The sole difference is in my personal stress level, and that stress was mostly fueled by a feeling of being trapped and of hopelessness about my financial state. It’s gone now, and I’m much better for it.

Discovering and rediscovering the things that make me happy When I come home at night, I spend maybe an hour doing stuff I have to do, like housework and such, and the rest of the evening is spent doing what I want to do. With the biggest stresses gone from my life (work stress and financial stress), I realize how many interesting things I really want to spend my time on. I’ve rediscovered my love for writing (and you’re reading some of the output of that), been reading like a madman, been spending hours with my son (especially taking him to the park), been teaching myself how to play the piano (using one freely available to me), and basically doing stuff that seems enjoyable to me. What do all of these have in common? They cost very little money and bring me a lot of personal enjoyment.

So, the question to ask yourself is whether or not the stuff you spend your money on is worth sacrificing this type of freedom. Is splurging for a new Lexus versus driving your Caprice for a few more years really worth what you truly give up for it? For me, I will never go back to spending anywhere near all of my income in a given month, at least not until retirement. The freedom from spending money is an incredible freedom.

Item I Want: A Nintendo Wii
Tactic I’m Using: Realizing I’ll rarely use it

Whenever I think about buying a Wii, I picture playing it with friends and also with relatives during holiday get-togethers. I’ve played with one and really had a lot of fun with the sports games with it, and I can see it being a barrel of laughs with some of my friends and relatives.

In order to avoid buying this item, though, I ask myself how much I would play it in a very honest fashion. The truth is, except for when friends are over, I probably wouldn’t play it much at all. Using that, I start calculating the costs associated with the system, an extra controller, and potentially a few more games (particularly the downloaded ones, which I would enjoy for the retro appeal), and I realize the cost per hour of enjoyment on a pure entertainment project is really quite high.

Item I Want: A Treo 700p
Tactic I’m Using: Unneeded item replacement

This gadget gets my motor running every time I see one. The plethora of features (mostly the PDA-related stuff) really make me want one quite badly, as I can see tons of uses for it, even on a daily basis.

However, I avoid buying this item by using a mixture of my pocket notebook and my current cell phone. The efficiency of using these items makes a Treo into just a replacement for them, and a very expensive one at that. Why would I want to replace a pair of items that do the job quite easily and for little cost with an expensive item that does both? That’s really, really ineffective and doesn’t generate any additional productivity.

Item I Want: A tailor-made suit
Tactic I’m Using: Repeatedly hinting at it as a gift

I’ve wanted a really well-fitting suit for a long time. My body build (very, very broad shoulders makes my body look like an inverted triangle) makes buying suits an adventure and I’d love to own a suit that actually fits well for a lot of occasions.

My current tactic for this is to hint at it as a gift. My parents, in-laws, and wife are currently insinuating that they’re getting together to get me a birthday gift, so I believe (hope) that it is this. I have no qualms about specifically hinting for gifts – they would buy me something anyway, and this way it is know that it will be something I want or like.

Item I Want: A Dance Dance Revolution setup
Tactic I’m Using: Waiting for the right price

This DDR home setup is basically a home aerobics system. I want something highly interactive that can get me in shape, track my progress, give me some clear challenges to meet, and also work on my balance and footwork (because, well, I lack grace).

So how am I not buying it? I set some very low thresholds for what I’m willing to pay for each piece of the setup (the Playstation 2, the mat, the games, and the memory card) and now I’m waiting for opportunities to buy at the low prices I have in mind. When I see a component at that low threshold, I’ll buy that component; otherwise, I’ll save the money.

Item I Want: A KitchenAid Professional 600 Series stand mixer
Tactic I’m Using: I’ll buy it when…

This has been the hardest item to resist buying because of my love for cooking. I have been making do for years with a hand mixer that has been a very sturdy one, but it has made it difficult to mix a lot of things, especially bread doughs and mashed potatoes, and also to mix complex things thoroughly and evenly. A really good KitchenAid will handle that with ease, making it possible for us to make even more foods at home. I’ve also identified some very good prices on the one I’ve been eyeing, a price point I’m comfortable with.

So why haven’t I spent my money yet? I’ve made an agreement with myself that when I reach a specific savings goal this year, I’ll buy this for myself at the end of the year. Thus, not only will I be rewarded with a very healthy start to my investments, I’ll also have something I’ve wanted to own for a long time.

What would you consider your greatest achievement in the last few years?

Less than one year ago, I had five figures worth of credit card debt, a large outstanding loan on my primary vehicle, and I barely had enough money to cover the minimum payments on both. I had nothing at all in savings, either.

So what’s the accomplishment? Without increasing my income at all, I currently have zero credit card debt, I own that vehicle free and clear, and I have several thousand dollars in the bank.

Some people might not view that as a great achievement, but it did lead into the creation of The Simple Dollar, which I launched in November 2006 and currently reaches 7,500 visitors a day. It describes what I learned during this process of turning my financial life around, and the success of it is now aiding me to begin saving for some bigger life goals.

What was the key to achieving that success for you? Was there one thing, or were there a number of factors?

The key moment was the birth of my first child, a son, in November 2005. Before he was born, I was reasonably organized in terms of time management, but the management of a lot of other aspects of my life were a complete train wreck.

I remember distinctly one night, when he was about four months old and I realized that my financial situation was a complete nightmare. I was literally wondering whether I could come up with the money to pay for our housing that month. He was very fussy that evening, so I sat in his bedroom with him, held him in my arms, and rocked with him for several hours. He finally fell asleep on my chest and as I sat there in the darkness and felt him breathing against my chest, realizing how utterly helpless he was and how much he depended on me, I broke down completely. I put him in his crib, sat there in his room in the dark, and hit bottom.

I realized I needed to turn things around with my life, and if I didn’t do it now, I would lose everything that had value in my life.

In other words, the key to achieving this success, for me, was finding inspiration, and it was in the form of a baby.

What are the essential habits that you’ve formed to help you achieve your goals?

I could go on about that for hours. Here are the first two things that come to mind:

One, I avoid situations where I would spend money. I used to go to book stores and browse and usually leave with a book or two in hand. I would do similar things in electronic stores and so on. By simply avoiding these temptations as much as possible, I find it much easier to not waste money on such things – or time.

Two, I review my finances weekly, and do a major financial review monthly. This involves several things, such as checking the balance of every account in my name. Each month, I calculate my net worth (sum of all assets minus sum of all debts) and I strive to ensure that it goes up as much as I can possibly make it go up from month to month.

How often do you think about your goals, review them, and take action on them?

I have different regular cycles for the goals, but the key word is regular. For me, evaluating goals and determining further action is something I have to do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis without fail in order to keep moving forward. Whenever I slack off on it, I find myself slipping into bad habits and laziness.

How do you overcome failure? In other words, how do you pick yourself back up if you are struggling, and how do you motivate yourself if your enthusiasm is lagging?

Honestly, I play with my son. It’s really hard to feel too much like a failure when you walk into the house and a toddler who has just learned how to walk yells “Daaa!” and comes running towards you as fast as his legs can carry you. He often makes me feel like I’m the champion of the world by doing little things like building giant towers out of blocks in the living room so that he can knock them over.

Again and again, he reaffirms that I am not a failure in life. I realize parenting isn’t for everyone, but this little child has turned my life around and made me far more productive and positive than I’ve ever been before.

Could you describe your productivity system and any productivity tips you have for people?

My general productivity system is a lot like a simple GTD. I just write anything I have to do on a piece of paper as soon as I think of it and toss it in my “in” box if I’m busy. Then I process my “in” box regularly. Projects are on their own sheet of paper (or collected sheets with paperclips) where the top one is just a list of the tasks for the project. I also have a filing system for long-term storage. Instead of using the figurative “43 folders” of GTD, I just write due dates of things that are upcoming in the upper right and leave them in the inbox until the date comes. That’s it – that’s all I do to keep things going.

In other words, the compulsions of everyday life convince us to spend money, not save money. Even though we know that we should be spending less than we make, we’re human – we have moments of weakness and we often fall into those moments of weakness and make frivolous purchases. It’s not a matter of deriving joy from not spending money; it’s a matter of staying vigilant in your cause because you want to protect your dreams.

I’ll give you a recent example from my own life. While traveling, I was feeling very lonely: I missed my wife and my son a lot. Still, I had to get ready for a meeting in a few hours, and as I was dressing and looking at myself in the mirror, I just didn’t feel that self-confidence that I usually rely on when I’m in social situations. In other words, I was in a mindset where advertisements are particularly effective.

Wouldn’t you know it, I wound up less than an hour later walking through a shopping mall with a colleague, looking for a place to dine. On the way, I saw a children’s clothing shop where there was an image of a child, almost the same age of my own, wearing an incredibly cute outfit with a sailboat on the front. It took all my willpower not to walk in there. Shortly thereafter, we passed by an upscale chocolatier – and the smell of fresh chocolate made me think of my wife, and again, I had to tell myself not to go in there and buy a box of chocolate to take home to her.

I actually did fall prey to another advertisement. I generally feel more confident when I’m wearing a cologne of some sort – just a dab under my ears. Well, one of the reasons for my lack of confidence is that I could not find my cologne and I left my room without it. I simply felt less confident – and thus when we walked by a shop and I spied a bottle of a cologne I had considered in the past in the window, I wound up purchasing it. I put a bit on in the restroom and although I felt more confident at that moment, I felt guilty later – especially when I discovered that the maid in my hotel room had simply moved my bottle of Acqua di Gio to an odd place and I could have just worn that.

If I can fall prey to such weaknesses, anyone can. Here are ten techniques for keeping up a day-to-day financial vigilance. These techniques won’t always keep you from spending, but they will eliminate a lot of unnecessary purchases from your budget.

1. Keep reminders of your dreams next to your cash and credit cards.
For me, I keep two pictures in my wallet. One is of my son and the other is of my dream home. Whenever I go to make a purchase, I see at least one of these images and it makes me remember that I have very powerful reasons not to spend.

2. Use the ten second rule.
Whenever you are considering a purchase, stop for ten seconds and think about the purchase. Just count to ten and then consider whether or not you should make that purchase. Think about your bigger goals in life and ask yourself if the purchase really fits into that.

3. Keep clean and confident.
The value of personal hygiene is quite high. Keep yourself clean, brush your teeth, bathe regularly, and dress in clean clothes and you’ll feel better about yourself – and less susceptible to the influence of advertising.

4. Don’t take your credit cards or cash with you – or just take enough to buy what you’re going for.
If you have cash in hand or a credit card in your wallet, it’s a lot easier to buy that trinket than if you didn’t have the cash or the credit card with you. If you’re going out to a place where you might potentially spend money that you know you shouldn’t spend, take only the minimal amount of financial resources you need with you.

5. Avoid situations where it’s easy to spend.
If someone suggests going to the mall, suggest going somewhere else instead – invite them over to your home, or go out to a park or a public entertainment like an art museum. Environments centered around spending money are very, very effective at taking money out of your pocket and putting it in someone else’s pocket.

6. Spend more time with people who share similar financial goals.
My best friend (besides my wife, of course) is one of the most financially stable and frugal people I’ve ever met. Doing stuff with him makes it very easy for me to not spend money – a typical afternoon hanging out involves playing board games or watching some random sci-fi television show. If you have a lot of friends, see which ones put you in situations to spend money and which ones are more likely to go along with activities that don’t cost a lot.

7. Explore less financially demanding interests.
I used to have a number of very expensive hobbies. My primary hobbies now are reading (I’m burning through my local library like a madman) and blogging (which eats time but is covering its own expenses and a bit more for the time being). Suddenly, it’s as if I have a ton of money for investing and saving that I simply didn’t have before.

8. Total up your expenditures regularly.
Once a week (or month, whatever works for you), take a look at everything you’ve spent, count everything that wasn’t essential, and total it. You might just gasp at this. Keep that number in mind every time you go to spend money and imagine what that number could be doing if it were invested instead. For me, it’s the difference between a nice house and a very, very nice house.

9. Ask yourself why exactly you want a particular item.
Thinking of buying a flat screen TV? Why? Is there something particularly wrong with your current television? Do you actually need to spend thousands just so your television can be thin? Whenever you evaluate splurges in this light, the compulsion to buy shrinks – and perhaps disappears.

10. Establish a “waiting period” before any nonessential purchase.
If you’re still ready to buy after all of this, wait a period of time before buying. Give yourself twenty four hours before making the purchase. Walk out of the store, go home, and sleep on it. If you still think the purchase is worthwhile the next day, then go forward with the purchase.

I used to be on this treadmill, and it was scary (to say the least). I went to work each day with a bit of fear in my stomach, a feeling that if I received a pink slip at work my entire life would sink into an unmitigated disaster. I sat down one day and realized that in order to live and to dream, I needed to find a way to get off this treadmill, but I was addicted to spending.

Yet, after just a few months, I found the treadmill slowing down and I felt myself stepping off of it. Now, I honestly feel as though I could walk away from my job without any serious regrets and be able to leisurely find another position if I so chose. It’s a wonderful feeling that has not only made me personally happier, but also made it much easier to focus on the things that are really important in my life. My stress level has fallen substantially and my family seems a lot happier, too.

Here’s a guide to getting off that treadmill and living a free life again – in just six months.

First of all, set a tangible goal. You are off the treadmill when you are spending less than you bring in and you have at least a weekly paycheck worth of money in a savings account. Eventually, it’s good to have half a year’s worth of salary saved up in a nice emergency fund, but for now, let’s set a goal that can be attained by someone on the paycheck treadmill in a reasonable amount of time.

How can you spend less than you bring in? You can start by putting a little bit each week automatically into a “locked box.” It’s pretty easy: just sign up for an online savings account at HSBC Direct (5.05% APY interest rate) or ING Direct (4.5% APY interest rate, awesome interface, great customer service). Set it up to withdraw a small amount from your checking account each week and forget about it for several months. Depending on how much your weekly withdrawals are, you could suddenly have a very nice buffer against emergencies.

Another technique is to use the ten second rule. Every time you make a purchase of any kind, stop for ten seconds and ask yourself if it’s really worth buying. Quite often, you’ll find yourself putting the item back on the shelf. For some people, a “24 hour rule” works better, but the concept is the same: think before you buy.

Just doing these two things is enough to set you in the right direction. If you’re ready to take another step, try out the one month challenge as a way to really take a fresh look at what you’re buying. Spend that month carefully considering each item you buy and recording all expenditures, then look through the results and ask yourself whether this stuff is worth the stress of barely staying on the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill.

Give it six months and see where you’re at in that lock box. You’ll probably find more than you think in there; even better, you’ll find ways you never thought of to get yourself on the right financial track.

Every single day, millions of people spend at least $5 on their morning coffee run. $5 per day, for 365 days, adds up to $1,825. An extra $1,825 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $391,662.46 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I watch some of my coworkers go out to eat together. Instead, I slip my brown bag of leftovers out and head off to the lounge to catch up on my reading and perhaps chat with that interesting woman who just finished up the latest Pynchon novel.

Every single weekday, millions of people dine out for lunch at a cost of at least $10 a meal. $10 a day, five days a week, fifty two weeks a year, adds up to $2,600 a year. An extra $2,600 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $557,974.88 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I eye a line of people waiting for some take out food to bring home to their families, handing over $25 for some prepared food so they can drive home, plop it on the table, and make their family believe that food magically appears – that it’s not something you make for yourself. I plan to go home, make an inexpensive and delicious meal for my family that costs less than $15, and take the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Every single day, millions of people take a meal home with them to their families at night; other nights, everyone dines out. That extra $10 a day, 365 days a year, adds up to $3,650. An extra $3,650 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $783,324.93.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I watch the hordes of people jamming the parking lot at Target. Some of them walk out with huge bags of consumer goods, chatting on their Razr phones, and jump into their SUV.

Every single week, millions of people buy $100 worth of consumer goods that they don’t need – or even necessarily want. They see ads, or they see their neighbors having something, and they must have it now. $100 a week, fifty two weeks a year, adds up to $5,200 a year. An extra $5,200 a year into a retirement plan starting at age 25 that earns only 7% a year adds up to $1,115,969.76 on your sixty fifth birthday.

I used to be just like them, I think to myself as I go to sleep at night. But when I glance up at the ceiling just before I close my eyes, listen to my wife’s breathing next to me and my son’s shallow night-time sigh in the baby monitor, I’m glad that I changed things.

Just a few simple changes can make you sleep a lot better at night.

For years, I wondered seriously whether or not I was clinically depressed. I often looked at depression websites and noticed that I matched up with many of the symptoms, but I never bothered to actually address whether or not I was in fact depressed.

It turns out that I wasn’t depressed after all, but that my spirit was being crushed by debt and a fear of money. I was suffocating in debt and it surrounded all my thoughts, but I was too frightened to do anything about it.

Ask yourself these ten questions:

1. Do you buy yourself things as a reward on a regular basis, for such minor events as “payday” or “I got through work without killing anyone day”?
2. Do you realize that you need to change things, but feel too trapped by debt to even know where to start?
3. Do you lie awake at night wondering how you’re going to pay for the essentials in your life?
4. Have you lied to anyone about money in the last month?
5. Do you think to yourself “I shouldn’t be spending this money,” but you do so anyway?
6. Do you read or hear about people that are rich and believe that you’ll never get there without a miracle?
7. Is your first thought after a windfall involve what new things you can buy?
8. Do you owe so much money to various people that you can’t conceive of how to begin paying it off?
9. Do you believe that you will never be out of debt?
10. Do you believe that you will never have “enough” money?

If you answered “yes” to the majority of those questions, there’s a good chance that you feel a general malaise in your life. For me, it coated everything with a sense of sadness and helplessness. I felt as though I was slogging through a swamp flowing backwards and it took all of my effort to merely stay in place.

After a while, things did begin to slip backward and I was nearly swept away by an onslaught of unexpected events. I finally realized that I had to do something to fix things, and so I started as easily as I can.

I started by taking one day at a time. I just woke up each morning and committed myself to not spending money in unnecessary ways. I didn’t worry about saving or investing or anything for a while; I just worried about not spending money.

After a month or two, I suddenly began to realize that my checking account had a lot more money in it. I remember the day that I realized I could make a quadruple payment on my highest interest credit card. When I wrote that check and put it in the mail, I felt as if there was a ray of sunshine on me. It didn’t drive all of the clouds away, but I began to feel the warmth of the sun just behind the clouds.

Two months later, I paid off that high interest card. In the five months since then, I’ve paid off all of my credit cards, my auto loan, and I’ve started investing in a mutual fund.

Once these events started occurring, the clouds lifted from my life. I realized that my worries about money were not only affecting me, but they had been affecting my relationship with others, including my wife and my son. I began to see them in a new light, not one clouded in worry about how I was going to provide for them, but as the beautiful people they are and what they give me each day.

Please, if you answered “yes” to many of those questions, wake up tomorrow morning with a plan for the day, a baby step for turning things around. Don’t worry about saving or investing or anything else, just make little changes so that you’re pulling less money out of your checking account. If you want, keep track of the good choices you made and look at that list when you’re feeling down.

Give it a few months. Keep paying your bills as before and just keep making baby steps. One day, you’ll look at your checking account balance and realize that you have more money than you thought, and you’ll realize that there is hope.

Please note that I am not a medical professional of any kind; do not accept any of this advice as a solution to your potential depression. I’m merely offering reflections on my own life; if you’re concerned about depression, please seek professional counseling and don’t rely on this post for answers.

So, instead of spending thousands of dollars on … stuff … I decided to take a trip through these items that I didn’t buy and consider the financial shape I’d be in if I had purchased all of them.

1. A Nintendo Wii
Now that I have a son, I’m moving rapidly towards what one might call a casual or nostalgic video gamer. This system is basically designed for me; not only are the games simple, yet distinctive and interesting (thanks to the remote), the system allows you to download tons of classic games I remember from my youth. It wouldn’t take me long to blow $600 on this machine, games, and accessories – but it’d be a lot of fun. One drawback: I can easily see myself staying up all night playing Super Mario 64 again… the college memories come flooding back!

2. A Kitchenaid Professional 600 Series stand mixer
I love burning time in the kitchen, but one major problem is that mixing bread dough and other such tasks are very time-consuming with my current hand mixer. I either mess it up entirely or get impatient with the speed of the hand mixer. Thus, whenever I see a KitchenAid stand mixer on display, I stare at it with longing in my eye. Not only would I dump $450 or so on the mixer, I’d also buy a ton of attachments for it, too, meaning I’d be down $700 after buying the thing. But, oh, the breads I would make…

3. A handmade liquor cabinet
Currently, we keep our wines and liquors in one of our kitchen cabinets, a kitchen that’s already too small for its own good. I keep my eye out for liquor cabinets and I’ve only seen one that made me go “Wow.” It was a handmade liquor cabinet built by a Mennonite craftsman that made my jaw drop. Dark, well-finished wood and plenty of interior space made me quiver with desire, but the price tag made me quiver in another way: $1,300.

4. A 42″ LCD TV
We currently have a 32″ tube television that has a slight blue discoloration in the upper left corner. Before, this would have meant that a new television needed to be found immediately, and I would have stepped up to the plate by dropping $2,500 on a 42″ flat panel television, expanding our view while reducing the footprint of our current television. It would be hanging on the wall right now, beaming down at me with high-resolution video goodness. Actually, it would probably be turned off right now, as our television is, which begs the question of why I would have bought it in the first place if the television is rarely on.

5. An “ultimate” Dance Dance Revolution setup
I recently sold off all of my video game consoles and the game I missed the most was DDR. The version I had unfortunately had a very terrible pad for gameplay that didn’t recognize about 20% of the footsteps one would make, making the game incredibly frustrating. After realizing how much I actually missed playing DDR, I longed for a complete DDR setup, which would include a pair of $100 pads, the game itself, a game system, and a memory card, totaling about $500 for everything. At least I wouldn’t have to go to the gym any more… wait… I don’t go to the gym.

6. A Treo 700p
Pure technolust here, I’m afraid. $325 for an incredibly cool cell phone with all sorts of features on it: a full QWERTY keyboard for editing documents, an email client, a 1.3 megapixel camera, an mp3 player, and so on. Wonderful and amazing and pure technolust, as I already have devices that I don’t use all that often that do all of these things. Why rebuy them?

7. A TiVo
There are several television dramas that I would like to follow, so I considered buying a TiVo to make keeping up with Grey’s Anatomy and the like much easier than before. $250 plus an ongoing programming fee would have been my reward for buying a device that would enable me to watch programs that I don’t already watch and don’t make the minimal effort to even try to catch. Why?

8. A Solis Master 5000 espresso/cappuccino maker
I occasionally enjoy a cappuccino in the afternoon at work and have desired a drink at home a few times. In the past, this would have been more than enough to convince me to drop $550 on this exquisite cappuccino/espresso maker. The truth of the matter is that my preferred morning drink is orange juice and I very rarely drink any form of coffee at all.

9. A custom tailored suit
I’m a very large man and I always wanted a suit that fit me properly. I tried to talk myself into visiting a tailor and having a custom suit made instead of actually doing a bit of research; eventually, my wife saved us both a lot of money and got me a quality suit that fit me for a reasonable price, much less than the $500-$1000 a custom-made suit might have cost.

10. A trip to Italy
I’ve always wanted to visit Italy, so early in the year I began to save up the $4,000 I thought that such a trip would take. After debating it, we decided instead to go on a long camping trip along the north shore of Lake Superior instead, which turned out to be an incredibly memorable vacation that cost about 10% of the Italian trip.

So what did I do with that money instead of buying all of this stuff? I paid off more than $10,000 in credit card debt, paid off my entire truck loan, built up a three month financial reserve, and put a little under $4K in a mutual fund.

I might not have some goodies, but I wake up in the morning without worrying about how I would pay the bills that day – and I never will again.

The same epoch that has witnessed the unprecedented technical extension of communication has also brought into existence the deliberate manipulation of opinion and the “engineering of consent.”

With the advent of the internet and the rampant consumerism of today, this statement resonated with me. In essence, this passage refers directly to advertising, which seeks to engineer your desire for an object.

The article went on to discuss humanity’s desire to fit in and the various different ways this desire can be leveraged, culminating with this bit:

Vhen a subject was confronted with only a single individual who contradicted his answers, he \vas swayed little: he continued to answer independently und correctly in nearly all trials. When the opposition was increased to two, the pressure became substantial: minority subjects no\v accepted the wrong answer 13.6 per cent of the time. Under the pressure of a majority of three, the subjects’ errors jumped to 31.8 per cent. But further increases in the size of the majority apparently did not increase the weight of the pressure substantially. Clearly the size of the opposition is important only up to a point.

Disturbance of the majority’s unanimity had a striking effect. In this experiment, the subject was given the support of a truthful partner-either another individual who did not know of the prearranged agreement among the rest of the group, or a person who was instructed to give correct answers throughout.

The presence of a supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the dissenting individual was reduced to one fourth: that is, subjects answered incorrectly only one fourth as often as under the pressure of a unanimous majority.

The article is fascinating, as it indicates over and over again that our rampant consumerism is due to the effect of advertising working as leverage on some people, then those people working as leverage on others, increasing the cultural desire for more and more physical things.

Even more useful, the article points directly to some potential solutions for fighting off the human desire to “keep up with the Joneses.” Here’s a list of the implied suggestions.

Reduce your exposure to advertising. The best way to do this is *gasp* watch less television, as television is an incredibly effective advertising medium. Advertisements on television are designed to make you feel included in a group if you buy a product; that’s why ads use attractive people, so on some level you’ll believe that you are in that group if you buy the product they’re selling.

Find friends who want to resist the consumerist mentality, or encourage your own friends to resist it. If your common activity is wandering around the mall, you’re constantly being pulled by a social magnet to buy things you don’t need. Suggest staying at home and playing a game or watching movies or just talking about things rather than wandering around in an environment designed to convince you to buy.

Live in a place where the consumerism effect is less. In other words, look for rural or small town living. In most small towns, there is much less rampant consumerism to tempt you, plus the Joneses aren’t living in million dollar houses. A modest house in a rural area fits right in, so you don’t need to completely break yourself just to keep up with the neighbors.

Following any one of these suggestions can reduce the desire to continue the rat race of “keeping up with the Joneses,” which in the end means you’ll have more financial stability and more freedom to do what you want, not just do what the neighbors are doing.