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How much money would you be willing to spend to curb your desires to spend more money? Have you ever thought about that? And no, here I'm not talking about the value of buying things on sale. My parents, when I was growing up, used to have a funny joke about the fact that my mom would come home from the store and be thrilled about the fact that she saved a dollar to buy a $2 item that she didn't really need.

And my dad would always say, they would always laugh because my dad was the kind of person who would pay $3 to buy a $2 item that he actually did need. And my mom would run into a good sale and say, look how much money I saved. My wife and I like to joke about that as well.

If you find a good sale, look how much money I saved. No, you didn't really save money. If you're buying things you didn't have, that you didn't intend to spend. But no, I'm not talking about that little funny thing that we talk about. I'm talking about controlling yourself from influences and protecting yourself from influences that will lead you to spend more money.

I recently was speaking with a listener of the show, and this listener was sharing with me how he spent on average something like $60 a month in order to remove as many commercials as possible from his life. And the examples that he gave was spending on YouTube Red. Instead of watching the YouTube videos for free, he subscribes to YouTube Red so that he can avoid the advertisements.

And he subscribes to, I think it was a music streaming service, and he avoids the advertisements there. And he primarily listens to podcasts for his audio input so he can avoid the advertisements that are on commercial radio. And he spends money on various bits of cable equipment and TV watching equipment so he can avoid the advertisements on TV.

And his estimate was the total, speaking largely at the worst possible, probably costs him about 50 or $60 a month to save the money, sorry, just 50 or $60 a month on avoiding those advertisements completely. But the peace that he gains in his mind from not being exposed to all those influences and the curbing of impulses on his pocketbook made that financial expenditure well worth it to him.

And I've noticed a similar thing in my own life. When I was younger, I subscribed to magazines that basically had the primary function in my life of causing me to feel dissatisfied with my life. I was cleaning out some old bins of things. We've been downsizing our possessions to get ready for doing some extended family travel this year.

And it gives me a good opportunity to go through some of my junk bins that are still hanging around. And I found some, what I call lookbooks, that I created in years past. When I was younger, I would subscribe to various magazines, frequently men's interest magazines. And at one point, I actually subscribed to a male version of Domino magazine, if that's still around.

I think that the Domino is the female version, but it was all about men's fashion. And I would go through this magazine and all the time that I was reading it, I would be constantly exposed to articles on men's style and men's fashion and the latest clothing this and the latest footwear that.

And at the time, I would create for myself a lookbook. I would take scissors and I would trim out the particular item that I thought was interesting, whether it was a new cashmere sweater. I don't, I live in Florida, but maybe a new cashmere sweater or a new pair of boots that was well-renowned or this awesome new kayak that was the latest, greatest bit of gear.

And I would cut these out of the magazine and I would paste them into a separate journal that I kept of things that I wanted, all of them primarily financial. So all of them requiring money for me to buy. And as I was flipping through these books recently, I realized that none of those desires that I had then that I was feeding are present in my life anymore.

And yet I was feeding a discontentment with those activities. I was feeding a sense of discontentment. I was putting in myself desires to buy things just simply by exposing myself to this constant flow of information. And I've seen this happen to a lot of us. A lot of us do that.

We expose ourself to a particular area and as we focus on it, what we focus on grows in importance to us. So if we focus on the physical, tangible items, fashion items, a new car, whatever those things are, they tend to grow in their meaning and their importance to us.

Now, many times this is, as far as I'm concerned, morally neutral. It's not a good thing or necessarily bad thing. The key is to look at it and say, "What is this doing in me? Is this creating discontentment and nurturing a sense of discontentment, or is this nurturing a sense of contentment?" And as thinking, rational creatures, we have the ability to insert our minds between impulse or stimulus and response.

Animals don't have that ability. They have a stimulus and they respond. But you and I have the ability to stop between stimulus and response. But that's an ability that needs to be nurtured and cultivated. And it's an ability that needs to be nurtured and cultivated in light of a larger macro system of values.

If you value something like financial independence, if you value financial freedom, if you value frugality or thriftiness, then you should cultivate the disconnect between stimulus and response. Cultivate your ability to insert your rational thinking mind between those things. Now, just because you see something in a fashion magazine, like I used to read, doesn't mean that you automatically have to desire that and go out and pull out your credit card, run down to the mall and buy it.

You can stop and think in the middle. But one of the important expressions of that thinking in between stimulus and response could be you're simply removing the stimulus from yourself. Consider the example of my friend and listener. Would it be worth it for you to remove the commercials from your life, remove the advertisements from your life, or remove many of them so that you don't nurture that sense of discontent that the advertiser is trying to inspire in you?

Would it be a good idea for you to do, as I did in the past, to cut off the influences of things that were nurturing within me a sense of discontentment? I ultimately canceled all my subscriptions to all of those magazines, all the men's magazines that I enjoyed. I canceled my subscriptions to all of the car magazines I used to love reading.

This last week, I was driving with my wife and we were driving along behind a big lifted pickup truck, big one-ton with big mud tires on it. I was looking at it and thinking abstractly, "That's a really nice pickup truck." And I used to nurture in myself the love of trucks like that.

I would subscribe to four-by-four magazines and think about how great they were. And I would admire them. And I knew all the gear and the technology, and I was obsessed with it. But over time, as I cut off the influence of those things, all those desires just melted away.

And now I looked at it and thought abstractly, "Oh, it's a nice truck, but it's hard to climb up into. It's poor on gas mileage. It's inefficient. It's hard to load things into. It messes up the longevity of the truck by having the big tires, et cetera." And I've observed with things like cars that you can nurture a love for just about anything.

You can nurture a love for big lifted up mud trucks. You can also nurture a love for lower down street trucks. You can nurture a love for big giant trucks. You can nurture a love for little tiny trucks. You can nurture a love for vehicles that are incredibly fuel inefficient.

There are whole communities of people dedicated to giant monster mud trucks. You can also nurture a love for very fuel efficient vehicles. There are whole communities of people who nurture their love for hypermiling. I've always had an interest in long-lived vehicles. There are whole forums of people gathered together to celebrate hitting 300,000 miles on a car or 400,000 miles or a million miles on a car.

There are communities of people that gather to celebrate the latest new car and are constantly swapping things in and swapping things out. These communities are related to your finances. Imagine the financial impact for your finances if you nurtured an interest in very efficient driving as opposed to inefficient driving and long-lived cars instead of new cars.

That would have a measurable impact on your finances. Imagine if you nurtured an interest in frugal fashions as compared to the latest fashions. It doesn't have to be one over the other. You can figure out how to frugally accomplish the latest fashions, but the point is you can choose.

You don't have to continually fall prey to automatic reflexive stimulus response. I see, I buy. I see, I buy. I see, I buy. You can stop and think. You can see. You can stop and think. And then you can buy or not buy. And my encouragement to you today is control what you see while you're building the habit of stopping to think.

So control what you hear. Consider maybe paying to remove commercials. Control what you see by considering removing influences that are causing you to want to spend money. You may even control where you go. I, a number of years ago, read a book, I can't summon the title at the moment, about marketing to children and how marketing is done to children.

At the time I was in the marketing business and I've become very sensitive to marketing to children. It concerns me because children are much more, they don't have the defense mechanisms built in them yet. They're very vulnerable to outside influences. Children don't have their operating systems matured yet. That has to be instilled in them appropriately by their family and by the society around them.

And so I personally am concerned about the manipulation of children that happens in much of modern marketing. And when I read this book, I realized how deep the marketing messages go. And so to whatever extent we've practically been able to, my wife and I have worked to try to limit the marketing messages that our children are exposed to.

But one of our little tools and techniques that we use is recognizing that we can't eliminate their desire to want things. Children always ask for things. They want certain things. It's normal. "Daddy, may I have this, please?" When you're in a store and you see something. But one of our tools is, of course, and we do teach them to stop, to think.

I teach my teaching. I am teaching my children to put their desired things on a list so they can consider over time and try to instill that stop, that habit of stopping, saying, "Okay, stimulus, desire. Let me stop and think," before automatically responding. So we're teaching that. But one of the parenting techniques that we use is just to limit exposure, limit the places that we go.

And I was so... I chuckled the other day when I was shopping with my son. We were grocery shopping and we went to this neat little market that we frequently go to, to buy vegetables and fruits. And it's a market that's run by an Asian family. And with a heavy Asian influence, there is a much broader array of vegetables and fruits.

They have a whole section of Asian-themed products in the store, but a much more diverse stock of vegetables and fruits than is normal in a mainstream grocery store. And so my children enjoy going in there and they love to impulse shop or they have the same response. So we're in there the other day and we see some dragon fruit that are for sale.

And my son, of course, goes, "Daddy, can we please have that?" And it was relatively easy for me to say, "Sure. Yes, we can go ahead and do that. I thought it would be fun to try the honey dragon fruit." And they'd never had dragon fruit. I thought it would be a fun thing to expose them to.

And then we went on and we saw some beets and we hadn't had beets for a while. And then my children said, "Daddy, can we please have... Can we try those?" And I was struck by the fact that my children were doing the thing that children do in stores to see something and ask to have it.

But by virtue of the fact that we were in a produce store, it was easy for me as a parent to say, "Yes, paying a dollar for a honey dragon fruit isn't going to break my budget, nor is it going to break their health. So I can either take them into a candy aisle and have the stimulus response work there, or I can take them into a fruit and vegetable store and have the stimulus and response work there." As a parent, it's my job to choose which environment will serve my children better.

Which environment do I put them into? And it really made me consider my own actions. As I went back and I reflected on that, I thought, "Am I being effective in controlling the things in my life? Am I being effective in controlling the influences that are near me? Am I being careful with the things that I'm allowing into my life?" There are many examples of this that we know.

Some of those examples have an impact on our finances. Some of them don't. I've given various examples so far that have impact on finances. But finances are not just affected by things that are directly related to a transaction now. Finances are affected by everything in life. That's why it's so important.

Many dieting books, how to eat healthier, recommend, don't just try to get a little bit of healthy food and put it in your house. Go through your house and remove all of the unhealthy food. That way, you don't have to make so many hard decisions. Consider that. When it comes to specific financial transactions, make it more difficult for yourself to engage in the transaction.

If you are prone to compulsive impulse spending, cut up your plastic, leave it at home, freeze it in the freezer as some people do. Lock it in your safe. Give it to a friend. I recently had to cut off a social media addiction that I had used in the past and I needed to use it again.

So I locked the account down. I secured it with a two-factor authentication that had required a physical key. And then I locked the physical key in my safe. Now, if I need to go and use it, I could do that, but at least that way, I'm not tempted in a moment of weakness where I'm trying to do hard work and I want to go do something easy and hit that dopamine rush with a social media feed.

Put that in place. So if you are finding yourself spending compulsively, perhaps Amazon is the biggest budget category. Cut off your prime, finish it out, or delete your payment information, turn off one-click ordering or whatever those things are. Yes, it's convenient to spend money, but sometimes that's not helpful for you.

Control the environment that you're in. This last week, I watched a show on Netflix that I would commend to you. It was a show that was recommended to me called The Push. And the premise of the show, it's a reality show, could a normal person be manipulated through the use of psychological manipulation techniques of peer influence?

Could a normal person be manipulated into murdering an innocent person in less than 75 minutes? That's the premise of the show. And it's a fascinating picture of the influence of social pressure. I commend it to you. It's on Netflix as I record this in March of 2018. It's called The Push.

So just one individual show about an hour and 15 minutes long. There are a lot of lessons. It's very sobering as a depiction. And yet we're all subject to those influences. Psychological pressures and influences are significant, but you can stop and fight back. You can cultivate your ability to think.

In closing, it may be worth your spending some money to free yourself from financial temptations and to disconnect yourself from places where you're prone to spending more money. So consider controlling carefully what you hear. Consider controlling carefully what you see. Consider controlling carefully where you go. Consider the environment that you place yourself in.

Consider the people with whom you associate. And make sure that these things are a force for good. These things are a force for positive change. That since you're going to be influenced by others, make sure that they're going to influence you in a positive direction, to move you closer to your goals, to live in accordance with your values.

Even if it costs you a little bit of money, it may be worth it. Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals.

Before you go, three simple requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take action on it. Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life change.

So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share. That helps the person that you are engaging with, and it also helps you because teaching others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.

Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for this work voluntarily. Come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron, and you can sign up there to support the show at whatever level you feel is right for you.

This is a voluntary support. That's my Patreon page. You can support me with a dollar a month, five dollars a month, ten dollars a month, any number that seems right to you. But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

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