News and events today are dictated by the economic crisis that has followed the outbreak of the infectious virus COVID 19. The economic crisis has hit India too, many have lost jobs and many are contending with lower salaries and increments.
The silver lining in this extreme health crisis called COVID 19, is perhaps that it is teaching us to stretch and stretch our wallet. If you think about it, how many of us even use our physical wallet for making payments anymore? Practically everything can be paid for digitally. In the last few months, once again, thanks to the COVID crisis we have all learnt the use of digital payments. Not just that, we have also started spending less given the lack of shopping options.
Why not be smart and use this chance to actually clean out our wallets?
Cleaning your wallet has more to do with getting rid of needless expenses than throwing our old receipts stuck to the soft thin sides of your physical leather wallet. Even though the latter is equally important!
We all tend to collect several material items which lie around without use. More than that we get into unhealthy spending habits which have little additive value in life other than making us spend. If you too have accumulated junk and needless expenses that make your wallet empty, it’s a great time to clean it up!
This cleaning up will help you reduce expenses and add back to your savings, which you can then use to build your emergency fund and your investment portfolio.
Here are the nooks and corners you can go to for the cleaning and see how well you can shore up your savings.
1. Get rid of needless subscriptions
Subscriptions are hardly ever revisited. In the physical world, newspapers, magazines and shopping catalogue subscriptions take up wallet space. Although often left untouched for years, these can be easily discontinued once you take stock. In the digital space, however, it’s easy to lose track of subscriptions. From Netflix to Amazon Prime, premium services of Google and YouTube and various other applications that you may have downloaded, all have a small subscription being deducted on your credit/debit card each month. The good thing is that the payments on these services are automated so you don’t have to worry about renewals, but on the flip side, many services probably get renewed without any use to you.
Did you subscribe to the digital version of your favourite magazine but don’t end up clicking on the link to read the monthly issue? Have you subscribed to both premium versions of YouTube Music and Spotify, but use only one of them? Did you subscribe to a poster making app which you don’t use anymore or a fitness app which is lying unused? There are many subscriptions you can be saving money on. You have to sit down and take stock of all those which you don’t need and are unlikely to use.
Unsubscribe from these apps and subscriptions, you will find that a few thousands get added to your monthly bank account just by not paying for what you may have downloaded but don’t use.
While you are at it cancel those unused gymnasium, spa and club memberships too.
2. Cook more at home
Another way to clean out your wallet is to have fewer bills in it! The maximum discretionary spend happens on eating out. Even now despite the lockdown, you will find you have ordered pizza a few times and a lot of packaged food to help make it convenient. However, packaged food never fills a tummy and ordering from outside will always dent your wallet. Recipes of all kinds of preparations from across the globe are easily available online. Even if you aren’t a great cook, you just need to follow the recipe. The savings from cooking at home rather than ordering in or eating out are tremendous. There are varieties of coffee available too which you can bring home rather than paying Rs 250-300 for a lukewarm cup at a café.
Cleaning up your wallet is as much about cleaning up your habits which are causing holes and dents in it. Getting used to home food is one such habit which will definitely help you clean up your wallet and make more space for savings in the future.
3. Delete your shopping pangs
Addiction to shopping is something we all have to contend with at some point in our lives. Now it has become even harder to kick the habit given the number apps nudging you to buy this or that every day. There are brands which propose a new Sunday look for each week and even though the cost of each item of clothing may look affordable, once it piles up into many it starts to become quite a stretch. With the lockdown, there are adds for wonder mops and cleaning supplies which nudge you to get better equipped. Even schools require buying several sets of crayons, pencils, new notebooks and plastic pouches every academic year.
You will find that there is a stock of half-used or unused items across your house and yet you end up buying more of the same thing. As a one-time exercise clean out these items, look for things you really will use and keep those, donate the other stuff. Create some space in your house too.
At the end of this exercise, you will realise how little you really need and even if you were to create a want pile, that too will not be very large. What will happen though as a result of this is a decluttered home with more space to move around and a cleaner wallet?
A decluttered house amazingly can also declutter your mind!
There are so many ways to reuse old notebooks, clothes and unused plastic items. Recycling clothes while trying out new combinations can be a challenging and fun activity.
Begin by deleting shopping apps from your phone. The apps make it all too convenient to feed your addiction. Once the apps are gone, find ways to reuse. It’s the best gift you can give yourself.
Cleaning up your wallet will not only help you save money, but it will also give you back the control you lost over your spending habits.
Our spending habits are dictated now by the autogenerated suggestions from artificial intelligence enhanced mobile apps. You may not realise it, but the decision making has really been taken out of your hands and placed in the realm of psychological stimulus.
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