Spending Behavioral Change

Spending Behavioral Change

Behavior change is referred to the modification or transformation of the actual human behavior. It is composed of a vast range of approaches and activities that focus on communities, individuals and environmental influences with regards to behavior. The behavior that I am supposed to change is on how I use and spend money. It will begin by changing the behavior of spending much money in eating meals and consuming drinks away from my house. Fast foods always appear to be a bargain, but the fact is the behavior ends up scamming my body and wallet at the same time. I usually find it difficult and boring to do cooking in my house. Meals and snacks seem to be enjoyable since I do not spend much of my time cooking or going to shopping. Secondly, I have the tendency of spending money on things I had never planned for when gone shopping, an activity that i am used to do. The behavior has just led me often to buy similar clothes with the ones already piled up in my closet. It always becomes difficult to avoid some cute shoes with some cash at hand. I have often used money meant for other activities with the notion of refunding later and it is an issue that I always find unrealistic and hard to handle (Browning & Gørtz, 2012). Lastly, it is always challenging for me to look at commodity and goods prices when making purchases. When at shopping malls, I am always carried away with the attractiveness of goods and materials, for instance, I always pack some nice pair of shoes and dresses to the counter not knowing how much they cost and whether I have such an amount of money to cater for the bill.

I just realize the cost of an item after a transaction, of which much is hard to make a reversal.
My strategies for behavior change will be; first I will need to make the purchase of enough groceries that will sustain me for an entire week. It will help in making weekly savings by typically getting less expensive groceries per unit. Groceries bought at bulk are always discounted greatly. Moreover, I will save much by reducing the number of trips that I used to make daily when going to look for meals outside. Buying of groceries weekly will help me in making my monthly budget (Browning & Gørtz, 2012). It will be an amount of money set aside for grocery shopping each and every month separately. Grocery stores usually roll their discount deals monthly and weekly. Prices are fair since they are limited to expiration dates and grocers need space for other stock leading to right prices to bulk buyers. My second strategy is looking for a hobby to be indulging in when bored instead of going shopping. Hobbies will be the most effective activities to make me busy instead of going for shopping since all hobbies will be cheap and cost effective. Intellectually, I will make use of books through reading and writing. Reading of several journals and novels will be generally educative. Financial journals always have articles with advice on how one is expected to spend and save money. Body and health articles have precise ways of advising the type of healthy eating since using the restaurants and hotels as I am used to but can never part of them. This will be occupying me for longer hours when bored mostly indoors and hinder me from shopping temptations.
Besides, I will be engaging in exercise activities. Swimming will help in reducing boredom since there are several places that cost or do not cost anything at their swimming pools. Surfing on the internet will keep me busy and make me utilize sites that give advice on how to overcome bad spending behaviors and steps to be taken to achieve change. Moreover, I will be enjoying various online games when feeling bored and may not be tempted to go shopping or to visit an eating place. The last strategy to use is utilizing coupons. They will help in removing barriers present to the first-time trial which will help me to make tries on goods and commodities before making a purchase on a full price. This will be cost effective by encouraging brand switching as this will encourage first-time buyers.
The coupons will be helping me in trying every new product before I go for a purchase. I will be able to take advantage of new products on offer coupons which enable me to try things like food that I have never seen before. This is only if the food is appealing as expected. Special coupons will help in offering opportunities to change family meal plan at discounted rates (Browning & Gørtz, 2012). This will be through switching to low prices on sales that are yummy and normally expensive while the family is expecting normal boring meals. Coupons will help in purchasing emergency backup goods that I cannot buy when extremely expensive.
Relevant materials aided me in my assignment significantly. Supportive resources played a key role to keep me on track with my behavioral change contract. My boyfriend ensured every day that I never dropped by the mall for a meal and snack joints by him taking me home. He gave me some small punishment like washing his car just to make me be serious with what I had decided. On boring days, we went for long cycling activities in the evening, a situation that kept me away from shopping minds. My boyfriend became of help in the kitchen since he helped in preparing meals and washing utensils. He brought me a variety of ingredients for different delicacies that I enjoyed buying outside and taught me how I can as well prepare them at home. In addition, he bought me surprise gifts at every single spending behavioral change that I had improved. Miramar as a school-based resource significantly participated in my behavioral change. I was able to spend a lot of time within the school premises, a situation that prevented me from having too much idle time by keeping me engaged and busy. My workplace significantly participated in my change of behavior by receiving several advice and encouragement from workmates. My workmates ensured they followed up on my daily routines to ensure I was following the assignment procedure to the dot. Friends that I used to go with to take meals in restaurants and hotels stopped persuading me to accompany them whenever they felt like eating. Finally, my bank account also played a significant role by fixing the amount to save and what I was supposed to withdrawal in a week with consideration of what I should buy (Browning & Gørtz , 2012). I was only accessible to the amount that I had budgeted to spend in every month without any extra withdrawals. I had saved some amount that I occasionally rewarded myself with every time I made a significant behavioral positive move in money spending behavioral change.
To conclude, the assignment helped me in changing my habits significantly. When going out for shopping, I only go out with the cash needed. For instance, when with a budget need of $ 100, I usually go for the exact amount from the ATM and leave my debit and credit at home. I am always forced to work with the cash at hand despite seeing much appealing shopping materials (Browning & Gørtz, 2012). Presently, I know how I feel after splurging on specific items. I can effectively identify the underlying issue to avoid expenses. In boredom, instead of going for afternoon snacks, I just wake up and walk around. On setting financial goals, I have placed them in places that I have to look at them each and every day. It constantly reminds me of reasons as to why am cutting back expenses and sacrifices on difficult issues. I can comfortably decline requests by my friends to go shopping that is outside my budget and often avoid meals surprises that I usually receive from those that I used to enjoy with such moments.
On things that I did wrong, I never included a shopping list when doing my weekly shopping. Assuming that my mind could serve a good memory every time I went for shopping failed me severally. Every time I went for groceries made me incur some little more expenses by doing some little more ingredients just in case they were the ones I had forgotten.
On things that I did right, I was able to change my bad financial notion and habit. I realized that figuring and drilling on my daily fixes and how important cheap unwinding from activities is in reducing expenses. Instead of buying drinks and a meal from outside, I rush home and prepare a nice meal. Moreover, I am able to track my spending for every week by getting receipts for every purchase like from a vending machine, writing down amounts spent in cash, and descriptions of spending on my small notebook.
If I should do the assignment again, I will reward myself in every good behavior change achieved. This is because it is an achievement to make modification on personal behavioral changes (Browning & Gørtz, 2012). I will balance my bank account by regularly putting money into an emergency fund that will be giving me personal prizes as awards.
On the overall evaluation of my efforts, I stumbled severally, but with patience and positive attitude, I managed to make changes to my careless money spending behaviors. By not looking at my past, I managed to stop eating outside meals, careless shopping in boredom and made sure I analyzed prices of various commodities before making any of the purchases. It is very difficult to change bad spending habits, it took me honesty to myself to accept the pain that overspending creates to myself. The hardship of learning to change became minor than I had thought before. Changing to healthy spending is not a road to just passing by, but by patients and following the right steps, everything is possible.
References
Browning, M. & Gørtz, M. (2012). Spending Time and Money within the Household*. The Scandinavian Journal Of Economics, no-no
Browning, M. & Gørtz, M. (2012). Spending time: histories of institutional change, choice, and money. British Journal Of Learning Disabilities, 38(2), 81-82