Anyone who’s trying to control or reduce spending can tell you–one of the hardest things about being on a budget is sticking to it.

That first month, we’re brilliant: we squeeze out our money like toothpaste from the tube, and we don’t really mind at all. It feels good to spend less! Saving is fun! We clip coupons like champions, boil up pots of beans, read books by candlelight and basically feel like we’re heroes, cowboys roughing it on the wild frontier of fiscal responsibility.

But 30 days or so later, and there’s a really cool new toy to covet and the beans are starting to bore us. That’s when Consumption begins its siren song again, and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of the Justification Tango: I can have that new shirt if I take my lunch to work tomorrow. We can dine out tonight, we’ll just spend that much less next month. Only the spending starts to snowball, and pretty soon we’ve spent our “discretionary funds” up to Thanksgiving 2011 and there’s a faint odor of melted plastic coming from that magnetic strip on the back of the credit card.

Deprivation, as any dieter or newly minted non-smoker will attest, is hard. It’s really really hard. You start to feel resentful and put-upon. Life is suddenly terribly unfair, and the wild frontier is suddenly lonely, cold and dull.

How to keep the wolves of want away? Give them a snack.

If you’re feeling deprived, give yourself a treat. Find a place or purchase that won’t cause damage to your carefully calibrated budget and have a ball:

• Goodwill, Salvation Army and the like are great places to go a little nuts. You can get a satisfying stack of books or a pile of clothes or fun things for the house with very little money, plus get all the visceral pleasure of a serious spending spree. Just set a limit and see what treasures you can unearth while staying under the line.
• Consignment or Second-Hand shops often have amazing deals on name-brand clothing and goods. Find out if the shops in your area have buying days, then trade in some of your stuff (to make your limit larger) and get first dibs on the new crop.
• Really want to eat out? Breakfast is usually less costly than other meals, and there are some excellent brunch buffets out there. A little research and setting limits on price before you go can help you control costs.
• If you want that pleasure of stuff, of heavy bags of things draping from your arms, go to the library. Seriously! You can get books and movies and music enough to satisfy even the hungriest consumer appetite, with the added joys of no cost and no need to find more storage space.

Personally, I believe the need to own things is centered in a very old, very primitive part of our brains. Accumulating stuff meant having enough to get through lean times. But modern humans are finding it difficult to distinguish needs from wants–and as a result we have a lot of stuff, and a lot of debt.

We would love to hear your ideas on how to have the fun of spending and owning without blowing the budget. Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. We’ll share your ideas with our followers on Twitter (duly credited, of course, so let me know if I can use your name: first, last or both).

Filed under: Money management tips by Shannon