At a time when the government keeps warning us about record-high household debt levels, and people can’t seem to save more than they spend, the Everyday Money blog brings us an interesting post about a book written by David Krueger. The book is called “The Secret Language of Money” and in it, the author points to research done at the University of Hertfordshire that shows this compulsive need we have to spend might just be a bad habit.
That research was done on a number of people of all different personalities and asked them to change their behaviour for an entire day. So a shy person would be super outgoing for a whole day, while an outgoing person would try to be quieter for a whole day. In addition to that, for two days every week throughout the study they also had to completely break their normal habits and routines and do something completely different, whether it was eating differently, or just taking up a different hobby for a day. The study went on for four months and there were some interesting results, mostly that the majority of participants lost weight.
What does the study prove about money though? Some may question the relevance of the study, or what behaviours (outside of eating and exercising) have to do with losing weight, or what losing weight has to do with saving money. But, the research might show that we are indeed, creatures of habit. And that perhaps by breaking the habit of spending money, we’ll actually save more.
Think about it. What if you could get into the habit of making coffee at home every morning instead of stopping at Tim Horton’s along the way? What if you could get in the habit of putting “found money” towards the principal on your secured line of credit? Or what if you could get in the habit of saving your change, for an entire year, and annually putting that money towards the principle on your mortgage. Imagine how much money you could save on interest alone, not to mention paying off your mortgage faster!
Maybe it’s true. Maybe if we could just start forming better habits, even if they’re not major changes that we have to make every day, we really could lower our debt and start saving more money. What do you think? Are you simply in the habit of spending money?
