286 | Removing the Temptation to Spend

I ate a whole bag of Almond Joy snack size candy bars by myself. I have a huge sweet tooth, and when I have chocolate in the house, I’m eating it.

Many lawyers find themselves in similar situations with respect to their personal finances and the things they like to spend money on.

The best solution for my sweet tooth and for my clients’ wallets is to remove the temptation.

In this episode, let’s talk about tips to remove the temptation to spend and keep more money in your pocket.

• • my struggle with Halloween candy and how it relates to your finances
  • the importance of setting yourself up for success when changing a behavior
  • 4 tips to remove temptation and keep more of your money

• Need help with your finances? Schedule a consultation here

You’re listening to Personal Finance for Lawyers. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back.

Today we are going through some tips to help you spend less. But before we get into that, I want to share a personal story, personal experience of mine, that relates to this topic.

So as I’m recording this, Halloween has just passed. And that means that I had two huge bags of candy in my pantry ready for trick-or-treaters before Halloween. And now, after Halloween, I’ve got two huge bags of candy that my kids collected while trick-or-treating.

And if you know anything about me, I have a huge sweet tooth. I love chocolate. And one of the tips that I’ve always heard about Halloween candy, if you want to not be tempted to eat it, is to get candy that you don’t like.

The thing is the candy that I don’t like sucks, and I don’t want to be the house with the sucky candy, right? So I had the Snickers and the Twix and the good candy that most people like, but I also like it. And so even before Halloween started, I would be in there, you know, getting a little piece here or there.

And since Halloween, my kids have been eating their candy, and I’ll ask them like, oh, can I get a piece? Can I get some of this? I love chocolate, but it’s why I don’t keep chocolate in the house.

So any other time of year, I generally don’t buy it. But when it’s in the house, I am going and I’m getting pieces, I’m snacking on it. And I remember one time I bought a bag of like fun-size Almond Joys, and I was just gonna have it as a little thing where I can get a treat here and there. Y’all, I ate that whole bag before the next week when I went grocery shopping again. And I mean, my husband had a couple of pieces, but I pretty much ate that whole thing.

And so I stopped doing that.

And so I say all that to say, I really like candy, I really like chocolate, but when I don’t keep it in the house, I’m not going out of my way to go get some. But when it’s in the house, especially around this Halloween time, it makes it so much easier to be going and snacking and all that kind of stuff. The same applies with money, with personal finance and spending.

A lot of lawyers that I talk to say that they have trouble with spending too much, but I think the issue is they are just like me with the Halloween candy in the house, right? The things that they’re tempted to buy are really accessible or right there in their faces, and so they’re more prone to buy it than if it wasn’t so readily accessible.

So I think when we’re trying to change a behavior like spending, we got to set ourselves up for success, just like what I’m talking about with me and the candy, right? I have to set myself up for success. And I think that means creating an environment where it’s not right there in your face, where it’s easy to avoid it, it’s easy to ignore it. You want to remove that temptation and make it easier for you to follow through on this new behavior that you have.

So I wanted to share some tips that will help you to spend less by removing temptation, just like I need to remove the candy from my house.

So the first is all those marketing emails that you get. You know, you go to a store or you buy something online, and there’s that little checkbox, like do you want to receive promotions and coupons and all that kind of stuff? Don’t check that box. Or if you’ve already checked that box, if you’re already getting the emails and the coupons, unsubscribe from those emails.

Because the thing is, you’re probably not thinking about that store until you get this e-mail that they’re having a 40% off sale. And now it’s like, oh, well, maybe I should go and get something because it’s a deal. But it’s not a deal if you weren’t planning to spend that money in the 1st place. So when you unsubscribe from those emails or you don’t sign up for those emails in the 1st place, you don’t have it in your face all the time and it’s almost like out of sight, out of mind.

Like if you don’t receive the emails, you’re probably not thinking about buying things from that place as often. And so it helps you to decrease your spending on those things.

In that same vein, don’t just go on the website for your favorite store, or if you happen to be out and about, just go into the store. I’m just going to browse, just going to see what they have. No, you’re not. You’re going to spend money, and you know you’re going to spend money. So don’t set yourself up like that. If you know that you love to buy X, Y, Z from this store, and you’re just gonna go and click around and see what they have, or go poke around and see what they have, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Don’t even tempt yourself that way. If it’s not something that you need, if you’re trying to decrease your spending, it’s not something that you were planning to buy, there’s no need to go click around on the site or go poke around in the store or whatever. That is setting yourself up for success. So again, and remove that temptation, and then you’re less likely to spend that money.

The next tip is to unfollow influencers. So if there are certain people that you’re following on social media and they buy something, and then next thing you know, you’re buying it, all of that kind of stuff is, again, you setting yourself up. because you’ve got that temptation right there in your face.

And they always make it look so good. Like, oh, that outfit looks so cute, or that skincare product worked so great for her, whatever it is. With these influencers, their thing is to make these products look appealing. And if it’s not something that you were already planning to buy, you having that temptation, you seeing this person using it, making it look good, making it look like something that you need in your life, it’s only going to set you up to spend money.

So if that is something that you struggle with, where you see your favorite influencer, they bought this new jacket, they got this new product, they got this thing for their house, and next thing you know, you’ve got it, just unfollow. If you stop following those people, you don’t see it. And again, it removes that temptation, which will help you to spend less.

Another tip for online is removing your payment methods. So when you save your credit card information into a certain store, into Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is, it makes it that much easier for you to shop and purchase those things that you see.

I know a number of lawyers have this issue, have this problem where they see a random thing on TikTok shop and next thing they know it’s in their house. So if you can remove those saved payment methods, again, it removes that temptation.

It gives you a little bit of a barrier so that you’re not immediately pressing buy and then having new things delivered to your house that you weren’t even thinking about before. It doesn’t completely remove it because you could always go and get your credit card or maybe your credit card information by heart, but that extra step of having to get the credit card or having to type the credit card information in, it gives you a little bit of time to think about if this is something that you actually want. And that can help, again, decrease the spending if these are not things that you actually need and want.

The final tip is specific to grocery shopping, although maybe this is something that is available in other types of stores as well. But I’ve talked with a number of lawyers who say that they’re grocery shopping and then they’ll buy this thing because it looks good or they’ll pick that up or they think that maybe I can get this other thing and it wasn’t something that they were initially thinking about getting. It’s just something that they see and it looks good and they want it, so they put it in the cart. And then their grocery bill is becoming higher and higher.

So the tip is to do the grocery store pickup if your grocery store offers that. I use the app for my grocery store and I just go through my house, like go through my kitchen, my cabinets, fridge, all of that, and see what I’m out of or what I’m running low on. And I add those things to my order on the app. And then sometimes there are new things that I’m getting, such as the Halloween candy, right, where I’m putting that on the list, but I’m not just going through the store and seeing something that looks good and picking it up when I had no intention of purchasing it in the 1st place.

So using the app and using the grocery store pickup has helped me to keep my grocery budget under control. Groceries have gotten more expensive in the last few months or so, but it’s something that can help you to keep that spending to things that you actually need and want, and not just stuff that you saw that looks good and you just put it in your cart. So use that grocery store pickup if your grocery store offers that.

All right, so those are my tips to help you spend less money by removing the temptation. Not setting yourself up by seeing those emails with the coupons for your favorite store or going into the store or onto the store’s website, clicking around when you had no intention of buying anything, following influencers that are always getting new things and making you think that you need those things too. Removing those saved payment methods from the online websites and such that make it that much easier to purchase, and if you are one of those people who impulse shops at grocery stores, doing the grocery store pickup.

So hopefully that is helpful for you. If you need help with managing your finances better to get out of debt and build your net worth, schedule a consultation at rhothomas.com/call and I am happy to assist.

Alright, so that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second and share this episode with a friend or two who you think could use this information. Sharing is how we spread this information to more lawyers. And as always, I appreciate your support.

As we close out, friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life, and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently, week after week, you’ll continue to take steps to take back control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.