Being mindful about your own money habits can help you to stay motivated, to break old habits, and to create new helpful habits along the way.

So, what kind of money habits are out there?

There are so many money habits.

There are money habits that save you money.

There are money habits that prevent you from overspending.

There are money habits for almost everything you do in life.

I will not attempt to list them all here, but here are some common money habits:

• Having an accounting habit (spending time every week, fortnight or month to manage your finances);
• only buying clothes on sale;
• not using the credit card;
• cleaning the house yourself;
• if something is broken, fix it;
• you can’t buy something new unless you have already sold, donated or thrown something out;
• If you do your grocery shopping on a Sunday, don’t go back to the shop again until Thursday (or the next Sunday)! Or some other rule for grocery shopping less;
• Doing your grocery shopping after you eat (not shopping on an empty stomach);
• Paying your bills on time so you receive a discount or prevent late fees.

Money habits for your home loan

There are so many money habits, and it’s often hard to know where to get started. Here are my five top money habits that are really helpful when managing your home loan and paying your home loan off faster. These habits helped me to keep track of our home loan and to keep on top of our finances. Since they are related to managing home loans they are accounting habits!

Don’t let that put you off, you don’t need to be a math guru to be able to do this for yourself. All you need, is a little know-how and 5 minutes to get going.

Here are my top 5 money habits related to paying your home loan off:

1. The single most important money habit (I’ll let you in on this secret soon)
2. Open your online banking account
3. Look at your income and expenses
4. Track your home loan
5. Forecast your bills

Choosing a money habit to work on

While my top five money habits can be really useful for managing your home loan, you may also have your own money habits that you would like to work on.

When you have your own money habits, this can help to motivate you, it can help you to identify what it is you want to work on and what is helpful for your situation.

When you do come up with money habits you would like to work on, there is one important tip to keep in mind: choose a behaviour that is specific and will help you achieve what you want. To get specific, ask yourself three questions:

• what is it that I want;
• what’s one thing I can do to achieve this; and then
• what is the easiest thing I can do to start achieving that one thing; something so easy you could start it now?

I like to call this the ‘want-one-now’ strategy—I want one now—when deciding what behaviour to work on and how to get it started.

Want-one-now.

What do you want to do? What is one thing you can do to achieve it? And what is easiest thing you can do to start achieving that one thing; something so easy you can start it now? Want-one-now. I want one now.

For example, let’s say I ask myself the first question, what is it that I want, and I decide that I want to save more money. I then ask myself the second question, what is one thing that I can do to save more money? I decide that I could save more money by bringing my own lunch to work. And then I ask myself the third question, what is the easiest thing I can do to start achieving that one thing;something so easy you can start it now? I decide that the easiest thing I can do to start achieving this is to bring in something really easy for lunch, like crispbread or bread and avocado. The crispbread or bread I can leave in the fridge (or freezer) at work, and I just need to bring in a topping like avocado or banana or something really easy (grab-and-go style).

Later, once I start building the habit I can bring more elaborate lunches. But to ease into this, I need an easy lunch option.

Something so easy you can start it now.

Want-one-now. What do you want? What is one thing you can do to achieve it? And then what is the easiest thing you can do to start achieving it, something so easy you can start it now? I want one now.

In the next two chapters we break down my top 5 money habits for managing your home loan. These start off easy with each habit building on the previous habit.