Spending coach reveals the five things she NEVER does with her money (2024)

A spending coach has revealed the five things she never does with her money that save her from sabotaging her finances.

Paige Pritchard, 34, from Dallas, Texas, has nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok, where she outlines how to stop overspending after overcoming her own struggles with impulse shopping.

The content creator, who is the founder of theonline community Overcoming Overspending, recently opened up about the unhealthy spending habits that she has overcome in order to get a hold on her finances.

'I am certainly not perfect at any of these, and when I say never, I mean almost never,' she clarified at the start of the video, which has been viewed more than 2.1 million times.

'If you know me and you know my story, you know that I have come a long way with my spending habits.'

Pritchard has been candid about how she once blew through a $60,000-a-year salary while living at home with her parents after college.

After realizing she could barely afford to get her own place, she curbed her spending, paid off $98,000 in student loans, and built up a six-figure investment portfolio by the time she was 29.

'If you're watching this video, and at the end of it, you think, "Well, that's great for you, but that can never be me." Don't fall into that trap. It's simply not true,' she said.

'Spending money is a skill. It's something that you learn and you can get better at over time. These five points, I absolutely still struggle with them.

'However, they are rules and guidelines that I use to direct my spending, and they are things that I consciously work on every single day — and you can too.'

1. Never spend money out of fear or scarcity

Pritchard shared that she stops herself from making purchases when she is feeling scared or anxious, which she admitted is 'really hard to do in today's world.'

'Scarcity, urgency, and fear tactics are the number one way that marketers and retailers get you to spend money that you weren't planning on spending,' she explained.

'When they tell you that there's only a certain amount left, that something's going to go out of stock, that the price is going to go up, these are all tactics to scare you into spending money.'

Pritchard said that before she spends any money, she asks herself: 'What's the underlying emotion driving this purchase?'

If she is feeling fear, stress, or anxiety, she acknowledges her emotional state and will stop herself from pulling out her wallet.

'When I do make a purchase from that place, it always ends up being a purchase I regret making,' she noted.

2. Never spend more money to save a little

Pritchard said she will almost never add more items to her online shopping cart just to get free shipping on her purchases.

'There's one scenario where I actually will do this, which is when the amount I have to add to my cart is exactly what the shipping is — so if I have to add $10 into my cart to save $10 of shipping,' she explained.

The financial guru stressed that this 'rarely happens' and most of the time she will have to add $20 or more in purchases to her cart just to save $5 in shipping.

'This is super hard to do because our brains view shipping as an inconvenience cost, a fee that we don't want to pay,' she said. 'So we will irrationally spend more just so we don't have to pay for that shipping.

'It's apromisethat I've made to myself and something that I have to practice. I don't ever spend more just to save a little.'

3. Never try to buy things that can't be bought

Pritchard admitted that it took her years to realize that there are certain things that cannot be bought.

'I never try to solve an internal problem that I'm having with an external solution. Meaning, I never try to buy my confidence. I never try to buy my self-worth,' she said.

'There were a lot of years where I tried to do that very unsuccessfully, and it took getting to a point of realizing like, okay, no matter how much I spend, no matter what I buy, no matter how much I am altering my external environment, this isn't solving the problem that I want it to solve.'

Pritchard explained that she now stops herself when she is tempted to spend her money 'trying to solve something that can only be solved internally.'

4. Never spend money for other people's approval

Pritchardshared that she will no longer let herself fall into the trap of spending her money to earn someone else's approval.

'The year that I impulse shopped my way through my annual salary, I was absolutely spending money for other people. Now it was for me, but it was really for other people,' she explained.

'I was desperate for the attention and the validation and the praise of other people. I got sucked into a lot of trends. I ended up spending a lot of money on things that weren't really me, but I thought that other people would like them.

She admitted that she just wanted to 'fit in' and 'belong' during this period in her life.

'I wanted other people to look at me and say, "Oh my gosh, she's so cool. She's so trendy,"' she recalled. 'So I ended up spending a lot of money for other people, but it really didn't do much for me.'

5. Never buy something you plan on returning

Pritchard concluded that the final thing she never does with her money is buy something when she knows that she will most likely return it.

'I see this a lot with my clients. They spend a lot of money just being like, "Oh, well, if I don't like it, I can return it,"' she said.'And listen, I am not saying that you should hold on to a product that you don't like or doesn't work for you.'

'But I also feel like we do a lot of spending with the backup of being like, "Oh, I can return it if this doesn't work out."'

Pritchard explained that if you already know that you are going to return something, you're merely making the purchase to get the 'dopamine hit.'

In these situations, she always asks herself:'If returning this wasn't an option, would I buy it?'

'Now, of course, we know that it usually is [returnable],' she added, 'but when I'm in that moment in the purchasing decision, I take the return possibility off the table for just a moment to bring me some clarity around the purchase.'