You're building a better personal 'money sense' for yourself every time you do this. Whenever a bank statement or credit card statement comes in, go through each of the items on it and ask yourself, 'Do I even remember this? And if I do, do I regret it?' If you don't remember it or regret it, think for a moment about that expense and how it was just a waste of money. Get in the habit of doing this regularly. What you're doing right now is training your mind to have a better sense as to what things actually matter to you. It's OK to say 'yes, that was good' to some of them, but if you're being honest, a lot of them are going to leave you with a 'no, that wasn't a good move' feeling. If you do remember, ask yourself honestly whether or not you're still glad you spent that money. Now, ask yourself honestly: for each one of those expenses, do you even really remember what that was? If you don't, it doesn't give you much value for your money. If you usually operate in cash, start hanging onto receipts so you can look at them.

Go dig out the previous month's credit card statement or your bank statement. In short, start spending time thinking about your expenses from a month ago. The first and most important thing you can do to keep money from burning a hole in your pocket is to think about your expenses a little differently. If you have some extra cash, here's what to do with it. If money is burning a hole in your pocket every payday, there are a few things you can do to keep from waking up on Monday wondering where all the money went. Then, a week or two later, you repeat the cycle. A few days later, you wonder where all the money went, or if what you bought was really worth it. Everything looks so tempting when you have that money in hand, so you spend. You want to have a little fun, or there's that cool new thing you've been reading about. You have all of these great plans - you're going to get your bills paid or you're going to start chopping down that credit card debt.īut it's Friday night, that cash is sitting there, and you want to do something with it. Your checking account is flush with cash.

Money in pocket