Procrastination

The Way to Spend Less

Today, we can buy anything, anytime and anywhere. We can get any information from the newspaper, Television, books or the internet. At this speed, consumers are losing their patience. Developing the method to avoid overspending and learning to control impulsive spending is becoming a necessity. Nowadays, the average family credit card debt is nine thousand dollars (Ariely 110). Surely this is proof that financial responsibility and education are necessities for today’s financial environment. But with so many ways to spend money many are learning the true meaning of the phrase patients is a virtue.

After reading “Predictably Irrational : The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Divisions” chapter three “The problem of Procrastination and Self-Control : Why We Can’t Make Ourselves Do What We Want to Do” written by Dan Ariely gives us some tips about how to control our selves. He had been teaching at MIT research on self-control and procrastination of the students. The ideas I got from the reading are that I can save money for the unnecessary items just using the pre-paid card and making the “money hold accounts”. As you know, the pre-paid card allows a pre set spending limit. Paying money in advance means that we can not use over the money which is in the card. And making the household accounts, I can see at a glance the amount I have spent in a month. In the reading, the author says some important thing, but I think the most important idea for saving is that the card users should decide how much money they want to spend in each category, in every store, and each days. Deciding the way to use money, I can make a specific goal which reaches saving the money.

I started to save my money by considering my credit card use. Before considering my credit card use, I am going to tell the reason why should I save my money. Using the money I earned, I could buy some nonessential grocery items like games, equipments for the favor and so on in Japan. I am used to that living, sometimes I need to be patient to buy some stuffs in America. In America, I have a lot of situation to use the credit card. The good point of credit card is that I can pay money easily and safety. The reason why I need to save my money is that I totally rely on the money my parents pay for me. I want my parents to keep their money, so I have decided to limit the use of the money. The two ideas I used to solve my problems are that we should decide in advance how much money will I spend and “self-control credit card.” I am going to talk about my idea with these ideas below. Considering my credit card use, it concludes the necessary living expense and the unnecessary grocery expense. To save my money, I need to save money for the unnecessary grocery items which mostly includes the expense for the Starbucks at first. When I had worked in the Starbucks, they gave us some beverages for free in the break (I think this is one of the strategy to increase the income). I had drunk some beverages almost everyday, so I always want to go to the Starbucks after quitting. To prevent from spending to the Starbucks, I got information from the reading.

The idea I got from the reading is that using the pre-paid card to purchase the products from Starbucks. Fortunately, there is the pre-paid card called “Starbucks Card.” Prepaying the money which I suppose to pay in a month into the Starbucks Card will prevent the over use of the money. Using this card, I can decide in advance how much money will I pay, and I can’t purchase no more if I have used that money. Suppose I decided to spend ten dollars a month on Starbucks, I strictly cannot pay ten dollars and fifty cents. The author suggests we should decide in advance how much money we will spend in each category, in every store, and in every time frame (Ariely 123). Just deciding how much money should I spend each category, in