Learn how to permanently clear credit cards, stop overspending, or pay off your mortgage early. Set real spending goals and claim your financial freedom.
Learning how to permanently clear credit cards, stop overspending, or pay off your mortgage early is not something we are taught in school. Instead, the marketing machine is teaching you how to spend—clawing at every emotional bone in your body, relentlessly, everywhere you look. Becoming completely immune to this corporate onslaught is the only way to support Team Me and ensure your ultimate freedom from the banks.
At first glance, a heading like "Your Spending Goals" sounds backward on a money-saving website. But your spending life is not something that any of us really consider, we tend to think short term instead of viewing our whole life as a Spending Career.
Are your goals just to spend as much as possible on cars, clothes and tech? I doubt that. Maybe you've always wanted a Rolex. Ask yourself why? I can pretty much guarantee all watches will do exactly the same job. So I guess you want one because you think it will impress "The Joneses"? Interesting considering you're now worrying about debt.
Unless you earn £100,000s, items like that should remain firmly off your radar. That's who they are for - people who can buy one without going into debt and buying it on finance.
So your spending goals will probably involve some nice holidays, reliable cars, a nice house, good food, maybe a wedding, and a comfortable retirement.
So how are you going to pay for all those things you want for your future? If you don't save for them upfront, they will cost you significantly more to buy on finance (not the retirement obviously). Get it clear in your mind, these are your ONLY two options for everything you will ever buy in your whole life:
Buy things with your saved money, or
Be charged to spend someone else's.
The Strict Witch Says: "You can only spend money once, so choose wisely."
Don't ignore the question. If you don't know what you are striving for, how can you be supporting Team Me fully? A vague "I want to be rich" doesn't work. And, believe me when I say, having all the money you need does not take away depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness, or any other issue you may have with yourself and your life - it just means you don't have money worries on top.
So turn off your phone for an hour, get a pen and a notebook (old school) and write down all the things that you hope to get from all the finance websites you read. What are you searching for? What's stopping you? What do you really want from your life that money buys? No amount of reading will change anything, you have to actually do something.
Changing your financial life for the benefit of you is like eating 5-a-day or going for a walk - it's part of your overall health. We don't have a spending gene that needs a daily cuddle, but we do need peace of mind. Supporting your financial security is supporting your mental health. It's proving you are strong enough to break away from what social media purports to be the norm. Overspending and getting into debt is not your financial destiny unless you choose it. Debt isn't like brushing your teeth - something that is inherently good for you. It's chaining you to a desk for the next however many years, it's causing you sleepless nights, and just like any addiction, it doesn't go away on its own.
When you choose to live below your means, you aren't depriving yourself - you are buying options. Because I watched my pennies and ignored the corporate status machine, I didn't just buy an early retirement at 53. During my working career, I successfully took two year-long career breaks and never worked between June and September for the last 8 years.
They were completely unpaid. Because I had beat the spending bug back with a stick and stuffed my cash buffers, I had the financial power to step off the corporate treadmill for 24 months and take summers off from doing house clearance to do exactly what I wanted, completely on my own terms.
If you know your goals, you have a plan for the money you are going to earn. Once your debts are cleared you spend 100% of your money on Team Me. That is not selfish, that's what your money is for - you earned it!
If you've always wanted to visit Australia, how much will that cost? Based on your daily number, how long will it take you to save for it? 3 years? 5? Surely it is better to save upfront than to put it on a credit card or get a loan, leaving you paying for it 5 years after you've been while costing you twice the price!
The other thing about saving towards a personal financial goal - like when I was working towards paying off my mortgage - is that once you are locked into the goal, saving is easy. You automatically see that daily coffee as delaying you getting to your target. You naturally start to think about driving less to save fuel, or turning off lights to save a bit on your energy bill.
So, there are big goals: paying off the mortgage early, saving into an ISA for your retirement, or travelling the globe for a year. And smaller goals: buying your first car in cash, a trip to Spain, or a new phone outright. But it's your life. Only you know what you want from it and how you want to spend your money. With no debts, you get to choose what happens to every penny!
Here's a thought. The average full-time working Joe earns approximately £39,000. If Average Joe is 35, he has another 33 years (maybe) of working ahead of him until state retirement age. Using current tax rates and a standard 3% workplace pension contribution, he will bring home £30,429.60 a year.
Assuming annual pay rises broadly cover future inflation to keep things simple, in 35 years he will have brought home a massive fortune of £1,004,176.80. How is he going to spend that million? Yes, he'll have essential bills, but what about the rest of it?
If Joe spends his spare cash for the next 33 years on leasing cars on PCP finance, a luxury watch on a payment plan, and holidays all on credit, he won't have that full million to spend on himself. He'll hand roughly 25% of his entire lifetime wealth straight to finance companies in hidden interest and fees.
Let's say 50% of Joe's cash goes on his essential bills, and 25% disappears into credit repayments. That leaves Joe with just 25% of what he earns - leaving him completely trapped on the daily drudgery of the working rollercoaster.
Goals give you direction and a challenge.
A goal you can see getting closer gives you incredible willpower to keep going.
Choose your goals based on what you want out of your short time on earth. Don't worry about what anyone else is doing - especially The Joneses. These are your personal goals - that gives you way more motivation to achieve them than if you 'think' you should want something.
You are not going without to meet your goal - no one ever said your whole life had to be about buying stuff. You are choosing to save your money for Future You. On the things YOU WANT, not paying it back to a bank.
Some Common Goals to Write in Your Notebook:
6-month emergency fund
An amazing holiday paid in cash
A year off work to go traveling
A deposit for your next home
Marriage and children
Reliable cars bought with cash
Overpaying the mortgage to be mortgage free by x years old
Early retirement - remember all the free extra money you get from the Government when saving into a pension - claim as much as you can as young as you can
Having spending goals for your future flows of money is sensible planning. If you think you never have enough money now, and you keep spending the way you do, you'll never have any money. Remember the saying: 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'? You know what you have to do.
All the tools that give you the real numbers that you have to play with are right here on this site. Start supporting Team Me for Future YOU and turn your back on that debt dragon that's sucking the life out of you and your future.
Managing money isn't a complex mathematical puzzle; it's a battle against relentless marketing. Use this straightforward, step-by-step roadmap to see exactly where your household cash needs to be directed to buy back your freedom:
Phase 1: Clear the Cards – Minimize your non-essential spending to zero until high-interest store cards, overdrafts, Buy-Now-Pay-Later and credit card balances are permanently cleared. Stop feeding the banks your hard-earned money.
Phase 2: Build the Emergency Cushion – Build a safe pile of cash (covering 3 to 6 months of absolute household essentials) in a boring, easily accessible savings account or cash ISA to protect you when life happens.
Phase 3: Quit the Car Finance Trap – Save a dedicated cash fund so you can buy your next reliable used vehicle outright. Stop making big corporations richer by leasing depreciating metal boxes on expensive monthly PCP or HP finance packages.
Phase 4: Overpay the Mortgage – Accumulate a massive deposit to get into the cheapest interest brackets, or aggressively overpay your principal mortgage balance early to claim your freedom back from the bank and drop your housing costs to zero.
For deeper, independent learning on everything financial, I highly recommend checking out these free, gold-standard resources:
MoneySavingExpert (MSE): The ultimate UK bible for finding the best high-interest savings accounts and utility calculators.
Rebel Finance School: An incredible, 100% free, zero-jargon multi-week course that teaches you exactly how to manage your financial independence.
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Head back to the Watch the Pennies Homepage to map out your full household strategy, or jump straight into My Financial Reality to read the real-world stories behind my early retirement.