My job leaves me living in a hotel a lot of the time. As I ignored my own packet of makeup removing wipes and used the complimentary one at the hotel last night, I realized that I probably save about $6 a year stretching my own makeup wipes by using the free ones when I’m staying at hotels that have them.
I mentally high-fived myself.
And then I wondered when it was that I actually managed to rewire my mind so that saving $6 honestly does light up a pleasure center and make me feel pretty good about life for a few minutes (not gonna lie, sugary treats still do the same thing for me, too).
[See: How to Live on $13,000 a Year.]
It certainly wasn’t always that way. There was a time I wouldn’t have paid any attention to the little freebies that come with a room. I couldn’t be bothered with coupons at all. If something broke, I didn’t spend so much as a second thinking about whether I could fix it.
When I came out of graduate school nearly $30,000 in debt, that had to change. Sheer terror is a powerful motivator, but 30 grand takes a while to repay and for that kind of marathon, you need a full mental shift.
[See: 11 Tips for Paying Off More than $100,000 in Debt.]
At first, building some frugal skills made me feel like I had more control over paying off that debt. Maybe I could only throw an extra $100 at it at the end of the month, but I was actively trying to figure out how to minimize my grocery bill, lower utilitiesor even mend torn clothing.
I tried to make “wear it out, use it up, make it do or do without” my personal mantra. Even silly things like making sure I used the soap or shampoo to the very end of the bottle — and to be really honest, I love the feeling of buying a new bottle of body wash, that first time you crack it open in the shower.
I never expected to hate waiting until I legitimately got to the end of the bottle to open a new one. What a weird thing, right? Even as I did it, I knew it was weird.
Scientists at Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon have actually been studying the pleasure and pain centers of the brain as they relate to shopping for years. Among their conclusions? Shopping is a constant balance between pleasure centers lighting up during acquisition (why I love to buy new shower gel) and pain centers lighting up when people feel the price is too high.
[Read: 5 Ways to Combat an Online Shopping Addiction.]
Their studies also include some interesting data that credit cards numb that pain center when paying. If you pay the same price for a large purchase in cash, it hurts more than just putting it on plastic.
For me, it was a slow slide combined with some serious Pavlovian conditioning to get my pleasure center to light up more when saving money than when acquiring things. I made sure to consciously remind myself of the money I was saving, even if it was pennies, each time it happened, and I also reminded myself of my end goal. A $100 dent in a $30,000 loan isn’t much, but I would remind myself that when it finally comes down to that last $100, I’ll be ecstatic it’s already paid.
Also, an extra $100 every couple of months for a few years does add up. It’s tough to see in the beginning, which is especially lame since that’s really when you could use a lot of encouragement, but it really does!
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How to Cultivate a Mindset of Frugality originally appeared on usnews.com
