I’ve been a CPA since 1981, worked as a Wall Street investment advisor through the 1980s, and written about money since 1991.
I still have to trick my own brain into spending less.
That’s the dirty secret behind most “money mindset” advice. It tells you to be more disciplined. To visualize wealth. A lot of that is junk.
Your brain isn’t broken. It’s just running software that’s tens of thousands of years old, and every retailer, lender, and app on your phone has hired people to exploit it.
But a handful of tricks actually work — not because they boost your willpower, but because they change the game around you. Here are the five I trust.
1. Make spending hurt again
Cash used to sting. You’d hand over a 20, watch it disappear, and feel it. Tapping a card or a phone kills that sting entirely.
That’s not a metaphor. MIT researchers ran auctions where some bidders paid cash and others paid by card. The card users were willing to pay up to twice as much for the exact same item.
The fix is old-school and it works: For the spending you struggle with — takeout, impulse buys, little treats — switch to cash. When the money’s physical, you spend less. Period.
2. Automate the decision out of existence
Every time you decide to save, you can decide not to. So stop deciding.
The most powerful money move I know is making the smart choice automatic. Money that moves to savings or investments before you see it never gets spent, because you never had the chance.
Economists proved this years ago with a program called Save More Tomorrow. Workers who let their savings rate rise automatically with each raise went from saving 3.5% of their pay to 13.6% — roughly quadruple — without ever feeling a pay cut.
Set up an automatic transfer to savings the day after payday. Bump up your 401(k) contribution by 1%. You won’t miss it — and that’s the whole point.
3. Put speed bumps between you and the buy button
If friction is the enemy of saving, it’s the friend of not-spending. So add some.
One-click checkout, saved cards, and “buy now” buttons exist to get money out of you before your rational brain wakes up. Every second of delay you add is a second it can catch up.
Delete your saved payment info. Unsubscribe from the retailer emails that manufacture fake urgency. And use a simple rule for anything non-essential: Wait 24 hours. For big buys, wait a week.
Half the time, the urge is gone before the timer’s done.
One thing before we keep going — the financial world is louder and dumber than ever. Hot takes everywhere. Almost none of it is worth your time. I’ve spent 35+ years cutting through the noise so you don’t have to. Sign up for the free Money Talks Newsletter — 10 seconds, no spam, just the stuff that matters.
4. Introduce yourself to the old person you’re going to become
Here’s why saving feels so hard: Your brain treats your future self like a stranger. Spending on that stranger feels about as urgent as buying a gift for someone you’ve never met.
Researchers at NYU and Stanford tested a fix. They showed people digitally aged photos of themselves — their own face at retirement age — then asked how much they’d save.
The ones who met their future face chose to save about a third more. Seeing that old man or woman made retirement real — and suddenly they wanted to take care of the person they’d become.
You don’t need fancy software. A free aging app works. (Do a quick search and you’ll find several.) So does simply writing that person a letter or picturing a specific day in their life. Make them real, and you’ll save for them.
5. Name the real opponent
Here’s the part the mindset gurus won’t tell you: A lot of your overspending isn’t a personal failing. It’s a designed outcome.
The Federal Trade Commission has a name for it: dark patterns. In a 2022 report, the agency laid out how companies use fake countdown clocks, hidden fees, and subscriptions you can’t escape to pry money loose.
Grocery-store layouts, “limited time” banners, pre-checked add-on boxes — none of them are accidents. It’s all engineered by people who are very good at their jobs.
Once you see the machine, you stop blaming yourself — and you start spotting the traps. That’s the real hack. The rest is just cleanup.
The bottom line
Notice what none of these five hacks asked you to do: want it more, feel guilty, or white-knuckle your way to virtue. That stuff doesn’t last, which is why willpower-based advice keeps failing you.
The trick is to build a life where the smart move is the easy move — where saving happens on autopilot and spending takes effort. Rig your environment, and your behavior follows.
That’s not mindset magic. It’s just knowing how the game is rigged, and then rigging it back in your favor. If you want more, here’s a whole set of these brain-based money moves.
Read the full article here
