One of the most interesting things I have learned about personal finances is that things that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with money often have a huge impact on your finances. A good example is knowing what makes you happy. Another one was discovering that the more I know about my personality, the easier it is for me to save money. It took me a long time to realize that I did most of the things in my life out of habit without without giving them a second thought, but once I began to see patterns of how I acted and how this affected my finances, I could make decisions that helped instead of hurt my finances.
One of the first discoveries that made this clear was the way that I eat. If snacks are around, I eat them. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this. If they are in the house, they will be eaten. If there is one, I will eat one. If there are five, I will eat five. If there are ten, I will eat ten. Once I realised this was the way that I eat snacks, it had a tremendous effect on how I buy food in order to save money.
The personal finance conventional wisdom about the best ways to save money on food is to buy the foods I eat on a regular basis when they go on sale and to stockpile them. On the surface, this makes perfect sense. For most people it probably does make the best financial sense. For me, it was costing me a fortune.
When I go to the store and buy myself my favorite snack, I purchase one at its regular retail price of $1.00. Sometimes it would go on sale for $0.50. In this case, according to the bulk buying financial advice, I should buy 10 which would cost $5.00, but the snacks would last me 10 weeks and give me a 50% savings. The reality would be that I would end up eating all 10 snacks the first week so that buying in bulk actually cost me 500% more. Knowing myself and how I eat means that it’s best for me to buy a single snack for myself each trip to the grocery store which saves me more than buying in bulk and also means I feel a lot healthier.
The more you know yourself and the way you act, the more opportunity you will have to save money. Taking the time knowing yourself will allow you to look at your personal financial situation to make the best decision for yourself to help ensure that you spend less than you earn.