“Conscious Spending” isn’t about encouraging overspending. Rather, it’s about focusing your spending on those things that truly matter in your life, and aggressively cutting on the things that don’t.
To start, I suggest that you conduct a spending audit and identify low-value spending. Which expenses don’t align with your values or bring you joy? These are prime candidates for elimination.
For example, let’s say you have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Do you actually use all three? Or maybe you tend to spend a lot on groceries? But you then aren’t motivated to cook and end up letting your produce spoil. What about getting easy-to-make meal prep kits delivered instead?
An unconventional method is to reduce necessary costs like your cell phone bill. Do you really need all that data if you’re always on Wi-Fi? This applies for every other expense that you might be paying – from cable bills to credit card interest rates, it never hurts to ask for a better deal.
As you free up money by cutting unnecessary expenses, you have more to allocate towards your priorities – whether that’s paying off debt, saving for a big goal, or investing for the future.
In the next section, we’ll explore ways to increase your income, giving you even more resources to work with in your financial plan.
