How to Live Within Your Means
Understanding and Finding Joy While Watching Your Spending
What Exactly Does it Mean to “Live Within Your Means”?
The definition from Merriam-Webster states that living within your means is “to spend money only on what one can afford”. Basically, it means to make sure your spending is equal to or less than what you are making. This can look like waiting to purchase something until you have enough money to pay for it, or planning ahead and saving up for future expenses, specifically large ones.
What Happens When You Don’t Live Within Your Means?
The debt trap is what happens. If you are spending more than you are earning, then you have no choice but to go into debt. You will be forced to use loans, and credit cards, and pay interest. You will get caught in a cycle of not having “enough”, so your debt grows larger, which makes you pay more fees, and so forth and so on, until you do something about it, or die. So, how about let’s do something about it, rather than having debt your entire life.
How Can I Live Within My Means?
Know what your monthly income is and start tracking your spending. TODAY. Go back over your last month, or better yet, the last several months, and write down every single purchase you made. From the $5 coffee to the online Amazon purchase. You need to understand where your money is going so that you can find areas to cut. You need to start saying ‘no’ to purchases that you otherwise might have said ‘yes’ to. You need to bring down your spending enough that it stays under what your income is. Then, once you understand where your spending problems are, and have cut what you can, you are then able to make a budget moving forward. Our family has learned so much about debt and saving, and budgeting from Dave Ramsey. If you haven’t read The Total Money Makeover yet, I highly recommend it.
Finding Joy While Living Within Your Means
It might be hard at first to start saying no to purchases, and cutting out things you enjoy. But, hard is not the same thing as bad. Here is a post on how saying no can actually be beneficial. For our family, we choose to stop eating out at restaurants. It was very hard at first, but then it got a little bit easier. And now we are finding joy in making more food at home. It happened bit by bit, until a new habit was made. As our habits and lifestyle changed to make room for living within our means, our mindset started shifting. We stopped having as many impulse purchases, and we were able to spot over-consumption quicker than before. We realized we could have just as much fun and enjoyment, but without needing to over-spend.
Start Today
You can start working towards living within your means immediately, one skipped purchase at a time. I made a spending tracker to help you keep track of your monthly spending that is yours for free. If you are needing more financial assistance or with significant help with getting out of debt, I recommend finding a financial coach.
I would love to hear from you in the comments and don’t forget your free download!
There are affiliate links in this post that I receive a small commission from, but all links are things I personally love and recommend.
