Biting your nails, chewing your pencils and leaving the milk container out of the fridge are bad habits that are annoying but won’t bring any major consequences. You can’t say the same for the following habits. You will want to break these for the sake of your finances:
1. Not Planning Ahead
Carpe diem isn’t the best motto when it comes to your finances. You shouldn’t focus too much on living in the moment. You need to plan for the future. This will help you reach big and small goals alike, whether it’s building yourself a comfortable nest egg for retirement or saving up enough money to refresh your wardrobe. You can’t tackle these goals without a little bit of financial preparation.
You shouldn’t just prepare for things that you want to happen in the future. You should prepare for the things that you don’t want to happen — like emergencies. Having a bad habit like not planning ahead means that your whole life will be turned upside down when an emergency expense crops up.
What can you do? First, you can start by building up an emergency fund. You can use it to resolve any emergency expense that comes your way. If you don’t have enough in your fund, you can apply for an online loan to help you cover the costs right away.
When you’re searching for loans online, make sure the options you’re picking are available in your area. Some options won’t be accessible to your state. For instance, you would want to look for online loans in Ohio with CreditFresh if you lived in Columbus, Cleveland or Cincinnati. This will narrow down your search and speed up your application time. You’ll want to resolve the emergency as soon as possible.
2. Not Tracking Your Bills
Do you keep forgetting to pay your bills on time? Do the due dates slip your mind? You need to get in the habit of tracking your bills. Otherwise, you’re going to land yourself with late fees and penalties. If you’re not careful, you could saddle yourself with a lower credit score and a higher debt load than you should.
You can use bill tracking apps to keep an eye on all of your upcoming bill payments, or you can automate your bill payments so that the funds get sent on the exact due date.
3. Impulse Shopping
You can’t resist an impulse buy. An ad catches your eye when you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed or reading an article, and all of a sudden, you’re on the retailer’s site with a few items in your cart!
You need to stop impulse shopping, or you’re going to decimate your budget and rack up debt on your credit card. How can you do it? Here are some strategies that can help you:
- Delete shopping apps from your phone
- Block shopping websites on your phone and computer
- Unsubscribe from retailer newsletters
- Unfollow retailers on social media, along with accounts that inspire you to spend
- Put your credit card in an inconvenient location
- Leave digital items in the shopping cart for several days to see whether you actually need them
Bad habits may be hard to break, but you should put in the effort for the sake of your finances. Keeping up with these three habits will impact your bank account — and not in a good way. It’s time to make a change and save yourself some money.
