I spend too much money online.
Okay, scratch that: I’ve spent what I’ve spent; it’s just time to stop for a while. Moving house was expensive, and I’d like to zero my debt again.
I struggle with consumerism, because on the one hand I know we in the West live an unsustainable lifestyle, and consuming is not creating. But, as a creative person I also know that it can be great and inspiring to have good tools. I like buying good tools (and I’d far rather buy something I can use to make an infinite amount of other things rather than buy a one-time enjoyment thing).
The challenge is that it’s too damned easy to get an idea* of something to buy, and seconds later be logged into a site and buying it. The money flows just as quickly away, and not always advisedly. (And it’s not “a treat” when you give them to yourself all the time!)
I have lots of other systems in place for dealing with my money. When my retainer comes in each month, it drops down a kind of Plinko board and gets divided into different accounts for different things (operations, income tax, insurance, savings, fun money, and pocket money).
The trouble with the internet stuff is that it lets me bypass all my systems and spend operations money or credit card money.
So here’s my strategy:
- I removed my payment information from iTunes. That’s a constant money-leak, so small you don’t notice it, but it adds up. I give myself £10 a day pocket money, and an album that costs £7.99 is a significant chunk of that daily allowance — but it comes from “nowhere”, so I don’t account for it, which creates a deficit.
- I took my credit card out of my wallet and sealed it up in a little envelope which is locked away in a box in my office.
- I reset my browser so it doesn’t “helpfully” fill in ordering information.
- Ah, but all my payment details are stored in a wallet application on my computer, as is all my login information for various websites. (As an aside, the recent Facebook security issues made me sit up and take action, and I’ve finally changed all my passwords to different, random strings.) A few sites are the big spending culprits or enable me to spend on other sites, so I deleted my login information from the wallet program and I made these little “credit cards” which I’m giving to my partner for safe-keeping. (There’s a good argument that we behave better when we think we’re being observed.)
Of course, you’d be right to ask, “Why don’t you just stop it?” Well, it would be nice if that worked, but cold turkey goes down a lot better in a tasty sandwich.
Speaking of which, I’m getting close to finishing the little game for keeping score of my productivity that I mentioned a while back. More on that soon.
*I recently stumbled upon a great acronym for this: WWILF — What Was I Looking For? This nicely sums up the endless hours of mental hopscotch one can play on the Internet.
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