Spending coach reveals the five things she NEVER does with her money

A spending coach has revealed the five things she never does with her money that prevent her from sabotaging her finances.

Paige Pritchard, 34, from Dallas, Texas, has nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok, where she explains how to stop overspending after overcoming her own struggles with impulse purchases.

The content creator, founder of the online community Overcoming Overspendingrecently opened up about the unhealthy spending habits she overcame in order to get her finances under control.

“I’m certainly not perfect in any of these areas, and when I say never, I mean almost never,” she clarified at the start of the show. videowhich has been viewed more than 2.1 million times.

The content creator, founder of the online community Overcoming Overspending, began by saying she would never spend money out of fear or lack of money.

“If you know me and know my story, you know I’ve come a long way with my spending habits.”

Pritchard has been candid about how she spent a $60,000-a-year salary while living at home with her parents after college.

After realizing she could barely afford her own place, she cut back on expenses, paid off $98,000 in student loans, and built a six-figure investment portfolio by the age of 29.

“If you’re watching this video and at the end you’re thinking, ‘Well, that’s great for you, but that could never be me.’ Don’t fall into that trap. It’s just not true,” she said.

“Spending money is a skill. It’s something that can be learned and improved over time. These five points, I absolutely still have difficulty with them.

“However, these are rules and guidelines that I use to guide my spending, and they are things that I consciously work on every day – and you can too.”

1. Never spend money out of fear or lack of money

Pritchard shared that she stops herself from making purchases when she feels scared or anxious, which she said is “very hard to do in today’s world.”

“Scarcity, urgency, and fear tactics are the number one way marketers and retailers get you to spend money you weren’t planning on spending,” she said. explain.

“When they tell you there’s only a certain amount left, that something is going to be out of stock, that the price is going to go up, those are all tactics to scare you into spending money. “

Pritchard said that before she spends money, she asks herself, “What is the underlying emotion driving this purchase?”

If she feels fear, stress, or anxiety, she recognizes her emotional state and will stop herself from taking out her wallet.

“When I make a purchase from this location, it always ends up being a purchase I regret making,” she noted.

2. Never spend more money to save a little

Pritchard said she will almost never add additional items to her online cart just to get free shipping on her purchases.

“There is one scenario where I will do this is when the amount I need to add to my cart is exactly the amount of shipping – so if I need to add $10 to my cart to save $10 in fees shipping,” she explained.

The financial guru pointed out that this “rarely happens” and that most of the time she will have to add $20 or more in purchases to her cart just to save $5 in shipping costs.

“It’s very difficult to do because our brains view shipping as an inconvenience, a cost we don’t want to pay,” she said. “So we will spend more irrationally just so we don’t have to pay for these shipping costs.”

“It’s a promise I made to myself and something I have to put into practice. I never spend more just to save a little.

Pritchard explained that she will almost never add additional items to her online cart just to get free shipping on her purchases.

“There is one scenario where I will do this, which is when the amount I need to add to my cart is exactly the amount of shipping,” she noted.

3. Never try to buy things that cannot be bought

Pritchard admitted that it took him years to realize that some things can’t be bought.

“I never try to solve an internal problem I have with an external solution. In other words, I never try to buy my confidence. I never try to buy my self-worth,” she said.

“There were many years where I tried to do it, unsuccessfully, and it took me getting to the point of realizing that, okay, no matter how much I spend, no matter what I buys, no matter how much I change my external environment, it doesn’t solve the problem I want to solve.

Pritchard said she now stops when she’s tempted to spend her money “trying to solve something that can only be solved internally.”

Pritchard added that she would never try to buy things that can’t be bought, like confidence, and would never spend money on the approval of others.

The financial guru concluded that the last thing she ever does with her money is buy something when she knows she will most likely return it.

4. Never spend money on the approval of others

Pritchard shared that she will no longer allow herself to fall into the trap of spending her money to gain someone else’s approval.

“The year I shopped impulsively to earn my annual salary, I was absolutely spending money on other people. Now, it was for me, but it was really for other people,” she explained.

“I desperately craved attention, validation, and praise from others. I got caught up in a lot of trends. I ended up spending a lot of money on things that weren’t really me, but I thought other people would like them.

She admitted that she just wanted to “fit in” and “belong” to this period of her life.

“I wanted other people to look at me and say, ‘Oh my God, she’s so cool. She’s so trendy,” she recalls. “So I ended up spending a lot of money on other people, but it didn’t really do much for me.

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5. Never buy something you plan to return

Pritchard concluded that the last thing she ever does with her money is buy something when she knows she will most likely return it.

“I see this a lot with my clients. They spend a lot of money just saying, ‘Oh, well, if I don’t like it, I can return it,'” she said. “And look, I’m not saying you should hang on to a product that you don’t like or that doesn’t work for you.”

“But I also feel like we’re spending a lot thinking, ‘Oh, I can give it back if it doesn’t work.’

Pritchard explained that if you already know you’re going to return something, you’re just making the purchase to get the “dopamine hit.”

In these situations, she always asks herself: “IIf returning wasn’t an option, would I buy it?

“Now, of course, we know it’s usually (returnable),” she added, “but when I’m at that point in the purchasing decision, I take away the return option from the table just for a moment to bring me some clarity around the purchase.