Usually, I like to investigate ways that you can make money or save money. But today I want to approach saving money from a slightly different perspective. This time I want to help you recognize bad habits that you might have that keep you broke.
Most of us have at least a few bad habits. Some of your bad habits may be dragging you down financially. You need to think about the habits I discuss below. Decide if any of these are your bad habits. If they are, you need to implement a plan to eliminate the bad habits and replace them with good habits that help, not hurt, your financial health.
Why should you be concerned about bad habits that keep you broke?
Table of Contents
- The bad habits identified below can harm your long-term financial health. You may not be able to retire as early as you’d like. You may be unable to provide your children with the education they need to be well-prepared for their futures.
- Your bad habits may affect your family’s security and sense of well-being. Even young children can sense tension between their parents when money is tight. Financial problems almost always affect every member of your family.
- As the adults in the family, you and your spouse may experience a loss of self-esteem and confidence when you can’t provide adequately for your family. Tension increases for the entire family.
What are some bad habits that may be keeping you broke?
1. Poor Budgeting Habits
No budget
If you aren’t making a budget, how do you know how much money you need for necessities? How do you know how to allocate your paychecks to cover necessities?
A budget is a plan to help you get your bills paid on time, buy groceries, and save for future needs (college expenses, retirement, vacations, medical emergencies, etc.). If you don’t have a budget, you usually spend too much on things you want because you’re not intentional about what you need. Then you’re broke all the time.
If you need help with budgeting, I recommend reading the following:
- 20 Best Free Printable Budget Worksheets
- Cash Envelope Category Ideas
- How to Create a Realistic Budget
No savings plan
People who don’t have a plan for building long-term savings often spend too much on discretionary items. Paying for a nice two-week vacation may be easy if you’re not putting any money in your savings. When you budget (plan) for regular deposits to a savings account, you’re thinking beyond today’s needs and desires. A regular deposit to a savings account should be considered a necessity in your budget. Saving is not what you do if you happen to have any “extra” money.
Related Link: 52 Week Savings Challenge and Free Printable
No emergency fund.
If you don’t have a fund for emergencies, you must figure out some other way to pay for them. Damage to your roof in a storm, an auto accident, an unanticipated illness, or loss of your job can leave you broke if you don’t have a fund for emergencies. You may have to borrow money (create debt!), pay bills late, or pick up a second job.
Related Link: Emergency Savings Fund
2. Impulse Buying
Impulse buying is just what it says—buying something on impulse, without planning for the purchase or considering how it impacts the rest of your spending. You see something you want, and you buy it!
I used to be an impulse buyer as well. It was one of the worst habits I had that kept me broke for a long time. One thing that made me realize this was when I started adopting minimalism into my life. I realized that I was buying lots of stuff that I didn’t even need, and that I never even planned to buy them.
If you always find yourself buying things on impulse, here are some tips to avoid it:
- Know your triggers: Record all your purchases for a week or two. Note the time and place you made the purchase, how much it cost, and why you bought the item. At the end of your tracking/recording period, look over your notes. What did you spend money on impulsively, without a plan? What made you buy it? Did one of your friends buy one first? Did you see a commercial for it? Was it at the checkout counter? Did you really need that item?
- Avoid temptation: If you see a pattern in where or when you make such purchases (your trigger), then make a plan to avoid or eliminate that temptation. If your impulse purchase is a Starbucks specialty drink on the way to work each morning (easily $5 or more), take a different route to work (and carry a thermos of coffee from home).
- Wait to purchase: Sometimes all you need to do is wait a week or month before making an unplanned purchase. See if you still feel the need to buy that item after waiting. It’s not unusual for the “need” you feel to buy something just goes away.
3. Not Taking Care of Your Health
Healthcare is usually expensive. Some bad habits that can keep you broke when you don’t take care of yourself:
Poor nutrition
Some bad habits related to nutrition include
- eating junk food (empty calories, too much salt/sugar/fat)
- skipping breakfast (then eating midmorning due to hunger/energy loss)
- eating too much processed food
- not exercising (the results of poor eating habits show up quickly)
Poor nutrition can result in obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and many other health problems. These conditions/problems mean more medical bills, possibly time away from work. All of this means spending more money and even losing some income.
Smoking
Nationally, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes in the U.S. in 2024 is $8.00 according to the World Review. That makes the cost of a single cigarette’s average price between $.31 and $.60, depending on which state you buy in. If you’re smoking just four cigarettes a day, your consumption is six packs a month–$48 at the average price! That’s a very conservative estimate of what a smoking habit can cost and how it keeps you broke. Many smokers average more than 4-5 cigarettes a day.
Not only is smoking a major expense at the time you’re doing it, but it can lead to expensive health care issues in the future. COPD, lung disease, emphysema, asthma, stroke, heart conditions, female reproductive health, and many cancers can be the result of smoking. You can learn more about the health effects of smoking here. Image how expensive smoking ends up being over time!
Drinking
If you drink more than a few drinks socially each week, the cost can wreck your budget and help keep you broke. Of course, it depends on how much you drink, what you drink, and how much alcohol costs where you drink.
What’s easier to consider is what drinking alcohol can do to your health and your financial situation over a long period of time. There are at least 25 chronic diseases/conditions directly attributable to alcohol use.
You’re probably aware of the connection to liver disease/failure, heart diseases, alcoholism, brain diseases, alcoholic pancreatitis, and cancers. Excessive drinking can lead to loss of income as well as increased medical costs. The combination can keep you broke.
4. Overspending
There are too many ways to overspend to list them in this post. But any single way listed below, never mind a combination of ways, can keep you broke.
There are poor shopping habits that cause you to overspend and keep you broke. Here are just three to consider:
Grocery shopping without a meal plan or a grocery list—Meal planning gives you more control of your grocery budget. Watch the ads, take advantage of sales, shop with a list of ingredients/supplies for the meals you’ve planned, and you’ll have a leaner grocery budget.
Related Links:
- Dining out frequently: Eating out or picking up takeout meals is much more expensive than cooking at home, especially if you plan meals. Say a family of four eats out once a week. At a casual restaurant such as Applebees or Texas Roadhouse, that family will spend at least $50 and probably closer to $75-$100 for their meal. That’s $200-$400 a month! If your children are under ten years old, it could be a little less. But if they’re teens—Ouch! Four hundred dollars a month could make a car payment!
- Paying for things you’re no longer using: If you shopped around and found a great deal on a monthly gym membership, good for you! That’s good shopping. But if you quit going to the gym and don’t cancel the membership, that’s poor shopping!
What about that great magazine subscription you got as a bonus for another purchase? You don’t look at the magazine every time it arrives, but you don’t cancel before the automatic renewal date. You’ve just spent money on something you don’t need or want very much.
Other similar purchases to watch out for:
- cable channels—you get the 30-day trial real cheap, but forget to cancel
- software subscriptions on your tablet or computer that you no longer use
- craft kit of the month—one or two were great, but you’ve lost interest
Conclusions
We all have some bad habits that cost us money. If we identify the bad habits that tend to keep us broke, we can build good habits, and have a more secure financial outlook.
What bad habits have you changed for a better financial future? Share in the comments below.
Leave a Reply