It’s not uncommon for people to spend as a type of reward. The thinking often sounds something like this. “I work hard, I’m entitled to a little reward. I earned it!”. I confess that I felt this way for a long time myself. And for me it was a wicked cycle with a net-negative outcome.

Improving my financial situation was first and foremost about improving my relationship with money. It was about psychology, being realistic about risk and reward, being honest with myself regarding wants and needs (and knowing the difference between the two). And it was about understanding what I needed from life to be happy and fulfilled. It was about making choices. Last, but definitely not least, it was about setting realistic expectations and goals for myself and setting up a system to motivate me to improve my relationship with money, with rewards when I did well, and consequences when I fall short.

The sense of entitlement to spend caused havoc with my motivation. I spent too much, indulged myself without sufficient regard for saving and setting aside for longer term expenses (from a few weeks to a few months into the future). I had a reason to improve my relationships with money, but no motivation to follow through with it. And I had enough wiggle room in my budget to allow me to continue to believe that I could delay making the change for at least a little while longer.

So here’s the question …

When spending is your reward for doing well or healing a wounded soul, how do you motivate yourself to establish a different type of reward to replace the spending. You’re taking away the reward that you’re accustomed to, leaving a major gap in your ability to motivate.

Here’s what worked for me.

Wake up to reality

The first thing I had to do was admit that I simply couldn’t make the change on willpower alone. This was hard (being the “I can do anything I put my mind to” kind of guy). But it was true. I was on the losing side until I accepted it. So I did.

Develop a plan

The next thing I needed was a plan. I didn’t feel comfortable spending at my discretion until I could prove to myself that I was able to spend and save responsibly. So I read and read and read, and thought and thought until I felt like I had a plan that I could trust.

I won’t go into it in detail here. But one of the most important features of any plan (and where I failed miserably for years) is wiggle room. How will your plan handle unexpected demands? Without wiggle room, you will fail to follow through on your plan. No matter how much you want your plan to succeed, without wiggle room, you won’t. So build it into your plan.

Decide what’s most important

In developing a plan I had to make choices about what was most important to me. It was clear that I couldn’t have everything that I had before. And it was equally clear that I could afford the things that mattered most to me, with some adjustments to quality, frequency and portion size.

Adjust

Some adjustments were needed in order for the plan to work. Some were structural adjustments, like downsizing our living space. Others were discretionary adjustments, like brown-bagging lunches instead of buying lunch most days. (read more about structural and discretionary spending here).

It might seem that this would be hard. It definitely took some planning, forethought and follow through. But it wasn’t really so bad, for one simple reason: the changes weren’t being forced upon me. I was choosing to make these changes. I knew these changes were good for me. Plus, I was determined to not go back to my old ways, and without adjustments there was just no way forward.

Make it easy

Sticking to a diet would be easy if you were only exposed to small portions of brown rice and bamboo shoots. But it’s hard when you walk past bakery windows with warm crescent rolls and cinnamon buns beckoning.

I find it hard to stick with a plan when I have to choose to stick with it over, and over again. Once the decision is made, it comes down to follow through. So I made it easier for me to follow through.

I reconfigured my direct deposit. I set up several checking accounts to allow me to better track my structural spending and allow enough (though not much) for a little bit of fun. I set up daily balance reminders on all my accounts. And I set up automatic transfers to delegate my income into the various accounts.  So I never again had to do the math to figure out if I had enough for this or that. I never had to worry whether or not I had enough for given expenses. I knew everything would be paid for before I earned or spent a dime.

Let the plan do the work

With the plan in place, my success or failure to spend less and save more was more a function of the plan than it was my ability or lack thereof to spend and save responsibly. And with my money being allocated automatically to my various obligations, all I had to do was stick to my limits, which at this point were crystal clear.

My responsibility was effectively reduced from my entire paycheck down to my “fun money”. Everything else was taken care of. And I didn’t need to worry any longer!

Wrapping up

Now it may seem like I’ve diverged from my initial topic of “finding strength to save”. What I’ve done though is shown you that it’s not really a matter of strength. It’s much more a matter of coming to grips with reality and plotting a course for success.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to get a person to change their behavior without effective motivation. And when spending is your reward system, taking that away is equivalent to debtors prison. And who wants that?

With a plan in place, you’re not taking away the ability to spend as a means of reward. You’re just changing the context of that spending, and imposing necessary limits. With the plan in place you don’t struggle as much with the question about whether or not the plan is a good idea, or why you decided to use it, or why you have to follow it through. Once the plan is in place, the plan just is. The limits are there and you just have to respect them.

Many personal finance bloggers have shared their story about waking up to the realization that they were on a collision course with financial ruin, and the process they went through to change their relationship with money for the better. Many of them have shared the anxiety they felt until they got on the right track. Many of them have shared the relative suffering they endured as the result of their unhealthy relationship with money.

It may seem that I’m not giving enough significance to the number of choices and the amount of personal change that’s involved in “just respecting” the limits of a spending and saving plan. I’ll simply say this: however bad your relationship is with money, that’s how easy it will be to respect the plan. The worse your relationship with money, the easier it will be to follow through on the plan. The more  suffering and loss of opportunity that you face as the result of a bad relationship with money, the more motivated you will be to never go back to your old ways.

In my case, the transformation was completely life-changing, for the better in every possible sense. I hope you have as healthy a relationship with money as I now have, thanks to the steps I mentioned above.

So what’s your story? Do you need a little motivation from time to time to spend and save responsibly?