- Structured spending is exactly how I save
thousands of dollars every single year.
I'll share with you six different
structure spending tactics that you can apply
to your day-to-day activities.
Most of us have areas in our lives
where we spend a little bit more
than we actually want to.
To help you manage through those,
use one of these six tactics
and then tailor it to your specific situation.
First, we've got the automation tactic.
Automation is one of my favorite things to do
because you basically just set it and forget it.
Outside of the routine check ins,
there's not really much you have to worry about.
The goal is to completely remove any decisions
you have to make when it comes to spending money
or saving money.
For example, if you have trouble saving money,
then automation is the perfect way
for you to make it a priority
without having to do much of anything.
Now, I've been at this whole debt-free thing for years
so I'm pretty good at managing my money at this point
but I haven't always been like that.
At first, it was really hard for me to save
so I utilized an app, an automatic savings app,
to help me save up more money.
So if you are trying to save up for something
or you need to curb your spending somewhere,
then utilize this automation to help build that
structure into your life.
Next is the time control tactic.
How can you control the timing of things
when you have to spend money?
Controlling how often you go somewhere
or how often you do a certain activity
can end up leaving you a lot of money in your pocket.
Maybe your friends ask you to go to dinner
multiple times a week, or your coworkers
always wanna go out for drinks after work.
It can get really really expensive
if we're always saying yes to these certain situations.
An example of how you can use this tactic in your life
is can you come up with an agreement
that you will go do these certain things
or buy a particular thing x times per month,
and then that's it?
If it's outside of the window of those x times per month,
then the answer is no, you can't do it,
you can't spend money on it.
This is kind of embarrassing but the way that I use this
in my life is when it comes to dating.
Because I'm single, it can get really expensive
to take girls out on dinner dates all the time.
Really really expensive.
I had a problem with this because I'm like,
"Well I wanna meet new people,"
and I like to go the traditional route
and go to dinner, but I don't wanna go just to have drinks
and get smashed because that's where things get weird.
So what I decided to do is I had x amount of dollars
per month to spend on dates
because that's what single people do.
If I want to go to dinner, it's gonna be
a little bit more expensive, but if I wanna extend
how many dates I can go on,
hey maybe it's with one girl,
doesn't have to be multiple girls,
then maybe I can go for coffee dates
and it's a little bit more expensive
so if I have $100 to allocate towards dates
I can get more coffee dates out of that $100
as opposed to one dinner, maybe one and a half dinners
because I'm a good tipper.
Next we've got the bulk tactic.
No, not that bro bulk, the spending bulk tactic.
I really like this method because it's twofold,
it saves time and it saves money.
The goal behind the bulk is to do as much of your spending
at once, as opposed to spreading that spending
among a longer period of time.
This is all based on the numbers
because the more chances you give yourself to spend money,
more likely you are going to be to spend more money
than you actually want to.
It's basically death by a thousand cuts.
I do this two different ways
with grocery shopping every single month.
I make the majority of my large purchases once a month.
For example, meat.
I make one trip every month to my local farm
to gather all the meat up, like it's my baby,
for all of the food I'm going to eat
for that particular month.
Now, I still need to go to the grocery store
every single week because I eat a lot of fresh vegetables,
which means I can't buy that in bulk unfortunately.
I still have to make a trip to the grocery store every week
but what that does is it eliminates
a decision that I have to make, a big decision,
which is the meat.
So when I go into the grocery store,
all I'm really focused on is vegetables, vegetables,
vegetables, maybe any condiments that I need.
The second way that I like to utilize this bulk tactic
is by doing all of my grocery shopping
on the exact same day.
So if I have to go to multiple grocery stores
or multiple stores, I will hit one
right after the other after the other after the other.
That way, I'm not forced to go to grocery stores
and have to grocery shop, or go to any other stores,
on days that aren't my grocery shopping day.
How can you add this type of structured spending
into your life?
Next, we've got the prep for the future tactic.
Is there something that you can spend a little bit
extra time on today to help prevent you
from spending more money later down the line?
One way that I like to utilize this strategy
is taking one day and prepping all of my food for the week,
maybe even the next week and a half
depending on if I can freeze it.
It removes that option of, hey, should I go out to eat
because I don't have any food in the fridge?
No, because I've already prepped for it.
Since food is where spending can easily get out of hand,
this is the perfect tactic to remove that option.
Next we've go the delayed tactic.
Time is your friend and it's especially your friend
when it comes to that impulse buying that we all wanna do.
This tactic helps curb those impulse purchases
that we always wanna make.
It's so easy to make a purchasing decision in the moment,
but what if we forced ourself to wait?
I like to utilize this strategy with any kind
of online shopping that I do, because it's so easy
to add things to your cart and then click purchase
and then you've got it.
So now what I'll do, is I'll add things to my cart
and then I'll wait a certain amount of days
to re-decide whether I actually wanna purchase that or not.
I can't tell you how many times I have avoided purchases
because I've waited a certain amount of time
to actually purchase the things
because I end up not really needing it.
I kinda just wanted it at the time.
I utilize this strategy and I'm already out of debt
so I technically don't have to,
but it still helps curb my personal spending.
You should see how many saved items
I have in my Amazon cart.
I've got a lot because I've done this quite a bit.
So create a timeframe for yourself.
Is it hours, is it days, is it weeks?
It's up to you what your decision point will be.
Last but not least, we've got the elimination tactic.
This is one of the more difficult tactics
because it forces you to remove something
from your life today so that you can free up more cash
for yourself in the future.
To give you a better example, if you stopped buying bread,
would you still be buying lunch meat?
Probably not because lunch meat goes on bread,
unless you're a savage and you just eat lunch meat which,
I don't even know what to tell you
because that would be weird, but that's okay,
'cause I like savages.
That was probably a silly example
so let me give you my example.
I utilized this structured spending tactic
when I got rid of my television.
I don't have a television anymore in my house
which means that I am not spending an extra $140
every month on cable.
Because of that elimination decision,
I save roughly $1500 every single year.
So is there something in your life
that you can sell or just get rid of
that will free up more cash for yourself in the future?
Managing money is already a difficult thing to do
so why not make it a little bit easier
by creating some sort of structure in your life?
That way you can focus on the things
that are more fun in life, the more enjoyable parts of life.
Leave a comment down below of where you could use
one of these tactics in your life.
Thank you so much for taking some time
out of your busy day to check out this video.
I hope you've found some value in it.
Please like, comment and subscribe
because I love you more
than I love structured spending, I do!
Alright, I'll talk to you later.