This week’s theme on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Change Your Bad Money Habits With 5 Simple Tweaks

Today, I’m talking about the first step in changing your bad money habits, and that is to simply understand how habits work.

Our brains need habits to function, and they help us do everything from playing an instrument well, to arriving at work each day, to remembering to brush our teeth every night before bed. Can you imagine if the things you do each day required the same mental effort each time? So our habits free our minds up to focus our energy and attention on the things that are new or require more effort. 

The other important thing to understand about habits is that our habits are tied to cues, routines, & rewards - understanding this habit loop will help you better understand the habits that don’t serve you and make sure you tie a reward to any new habits to make them stick. 

• Cue - need something sweet after each meal

• Routine - Grab a hershey kiss, a fun size chocolate bar or some other piece of small candy

• Reward - obvious - the sugary sweetness & sugar’s dopamine, drug-like impact on my brain

And lastly, you’re not going to be able to ditch a habit overnight. Those connections between cue, routine, and reward can be very strong and difficult to break. New habits take time to become routine and automatic - 2021 study - 2-3 months to form a new habit.

So be patient with yourself and understand the habit loop so you can stop the habits you don’t like and replace them with something new, tied to a healthier reward. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.    

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance