This last week I told my husband that we needed to practice some self control for the next 45 days. That means no “extra” shopping on Amazon or “I want” purchases. We were going to focus on the “needs”. So, fast forward 3 days. I was out with the kids and I thought, I don’t want to make dinner. I’m tired. Maybe I’ll just stop by and pick something up on the way home. Then my own words rang in my head, “No extra’s for the next 45 days.” Ugh, I knew that I had to follow my own advice. So, we went home and had french toast and eggs. This was going to be harder than I thought.

One of the reasons we needed to gain control of our spending was because we had unfortunately increased our spending because our income had gone up. Instead of saving, like I had hoped, we discovered things that we “needed”, that we could afford to now get. When I discovered this had happened, I realized that I needed to set up automatic transfers or we would never be able to save the increase of our income.

There are two types of spenders: Sprinters and Pacers. I am a Pacer and my husband is a Sprinter. I recognize this difference and because I recognize this difference, I put practices in place to stop us from having conflict. It’s not saying we don’t have conflict about money, but if those practices weren’t in place, we’d have more disagreements. Setting up the automatic transfers was one of those practices

Now that I’ve eased my stress about saving, I needed to ease my stress about spending. Thus the ban for 45 days. It’s like giving up an addiction or stopping a bad habit. You’ll fall off the wagon a couple of times, but you need to get back on and start back all over again. So after resisting the urge to buy dinner, I’m one step closer to gaining the self control that I need to have to be financially secure.