[bombcar]

The "deliberate with money" is really the whole key. Once your income is greater than your expenses, you can work out many things to do with the surplus, but getting out of the "I will just buy this now because I need a bit of joy" is huge.

One go-to I used for awhile was hamburgers - does the price of this thing please me more than the equivalent number of good burgers would?

[_yb2s]

Very valuable point. People joke about 'retail therapy,' etc. and I think this is a real problem, where buying things becomes an addictive habit used to escape negative feelings about other things. Its especially easy now that you can shop in an instant online from anywhere.

I think one way to combat this is to setup some rules- e.g. add non-urgent purchases to a 'cart' where you consider them for a week before actually buying, and don't ever buy non-essential things when you aren't feeling well emotionally.

This is why when you get deep into ideas about responsible money use, it ultimately ends up focusing on concepts like Stoic philosophy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), where you can work on reprogramming the internal narratives that lead to buying things you don't really need or possibly even want.