Discover how to break bad spending habits and stop impulse buying. Learn how cutting down on small weekly vices can add up to over £50,000 in lifetime savings.
Written 26th June 2025
What is your vice? Your guilty pleasure? Your fix? The thing you can't resist?
Whether it's a physical addiction or emotional, or material, I think I'm not alone in having one, actually more than one, over the years.
What was the thing or things that popped in your head when you read the 1st line of this post? See, you already know what it is and know you're hooked on it!
If it's costing you money, try curbing or stopping altogether. I know it's not easy. I have a 38 year one under my belt which I'm still trying to kick.
But I've given up caffeine, which was strange at first, but I found healthier alternative drinks so it didn't kill me and wasn't that hard looking back.
I can't think of anything else I've ever been all consumed by and am not going to make something up just to add to this post.
So whether it's drugs or drink or cigarettes or lottery tickets or gambling or sex or chocolate or bingo or trainers or handbags or expensive face cream or cars or phones or holidays or meals or or or....
I presume you're reading this because you're in a pickle with your cash flow, so if your addiction is keeping you poor, you have another perk to cutting down or abstaining - not least of all your health and / or mental health improving but all the money you could save to put towards something more important or necessary to you - your financial goals.
No matter what it is, if it's keeping you poor and affecting your financial goals, use your head and see the bigger, brighter future you'll have without it.
And don't forget, it's not just this week, month or year, you'll make that saving for the rest of your days, so times that annual figure by the amount of years you have left (obviously a best case scenario).
Coffee only costing you £20 a week? That's £1000 a year, if you're 35 now, potentially you have another 50 years in you... that's £50,000 saved. And that IS a lot of money!
Give it up, find cheaper alternatives or cut back. Every one of those options will help you financially, some more than others. Realise that every penny you don't spend on your fix, can be saved or spent on something more beneficial to you and your family. So every penny really does count because they add up to a very significant amount over the long term of the rest of your life.
Every single penny you claw back from a daily fix is money that can be weaponized to buy your absolute freedom. Head over to the Non-Essentials Calculator right now to tally up your own weekly habits, see your true annual leak, and sign up to the Team Me tough love weekly email today.