How To Stop Wasting Money on This Necessary Budget Item, According to Ramit Sethi #CanadaFinance

In today’s economy, where even basic necessities are more expensive than in recent years, it’s easy for people to unknowingly overspend on essential budget categories, hindering their ability to achieve financial freedom.

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Ramit Sethi, financial expert, self-made millionaire and author of “Money for Couples” and “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” emphasizes that there’s one item in particular that people are really wasting money on: food, although more specifically dining out (or ordering in).

Even worse, people often don’t talk to each other about their expenditures. He told MSNBC recently, “In millions of homes around the world, we’re having the same fights about money. One partner feels anxious, the other buries their head in the sand to avoid talking about it. One agonizes over the budget, the other spends on whatever they want.”

Here’s how to get this budget item under control.

Food is undeniably an essential in everyone’s budget — you have to eat to survive. But many people are going about it the wrong way, according to Sethi — overspending on dining out rather than purposefully meal planning or bulk shopping for food to make at home.

Sethi suggested that 90% of people he talks to could free up a significant amount of money just by redirecting their dining out and ordering in to other categories in their budgets.

He said this is partly because “food is emotional” — meaning that often people purchase food away from home for reasons ranging from convenience to reward for something difficult. Plus, it’s a way to be social.

Parents may also send money to teenage children via digital payment apps when it’s easier not to cook for them or if they’re out with friends.

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The first step is vigilance — start tracking your spending, be that through a budgeting app or by checking your bank app daily. Mindless spending is likely to lead to more of the same.

For couples or anyone sharing finances, he urged transparency so that you’re talking about expenditures and each of you knows what the other is spending money on, at least approximately. Don’t spend in secret and then end up fighting about it later — that adds emotional conflict on top of spending woes.

Next, it’s worth applying another of Sethi’s principles, which he calls conscious spending.