Some of the largest debts you can accrue may be the result of ongoing poor habits that influence your spending habits and decisions, such as excessive buying on credit, overspending on frequent purchases, or falling back into old spending habits. Regardless of how well thought-out your budget may be, it won’t be effective if you can’t stick to it.

Here’s a few steps to follow when trying to fix some of your worse financial habits.

Before diving into the strategies you can use, it’s important to highlight that if you think there is a problem, it’s important to start working on fixing it right away, as otherwise you may convince yourself that the poor habit is acceptable and normal, or outright forget

Humans inherently look for the easiest solutions to our problems, and the habits we form are often the simplest solution to challenges encountered on a frequent basis – which may not always work out so simply in the long run!

As a result, you can’t ever truly break a bad habit until you have a better solution to the problem it solves, as well as the resolve to stick to your solution knowing that it is by no means the easiest option in the short term.

A great example of this when you overspend on credit. The simplest option when shopping is to pay with the option that lets you “postpone” the payment until later (procrastinating!), leaving you to keep the cash in your wallet for longer in case you need it. However, when the time comes to pay it back, you face high interest levels on your credit, which can lead to significant debt should this become a habit

Cutting out a bad habit is a huge step, because it forces you to really look at what you’re doing in your day-to-day and identify what parts are encouraging you to make poor decisions. Because of this, it’s almost impossible to change a habit cold-turkey, as it represents such a radical change to your daily life.

Making small, conscious changes on a daily basis can be a great way to get past this, letting you ultimately make an impact to your negative habits, while avoiding the stresses of drastic change to your daily routine. Avoiding your daily “triggers” is a common method of achieving this, cutting down chances where you may be tempted to overspend or make unnecessary purchases.