Spending: How Much Is Too Much?

By Hannah Waters

Spending is easy. Saving, or even just not spending as much, is what's difficult. With consumerism ruling the American way of life, many people continue to spend without realizing how much money they have gone through. But honestly, how much is too much spending? And when is it time to stop?

You Struggle to Pay Your Minimum Payments – When you are struggling to make even your minimum payments on your credit cards, it becomes a problem. You should really be paying off your credit card bill each month if it is feasible. When you only pay off the minimum amount of money, you are getting charged interest on top of the interest that you got charged last week. In the end, you are not paying off any of your purchases and instead are just throwing money away.

You Continue to Open Credit Cards – Some people open credit cards wherever they go. Once one card is at the max, they open another card in order to make more purchases and just continue to run themselves into a ton of debt. If you have a credit card that is already at its max, you really should not open another one until you can pay off the one that is maxed out. Opening more credit cards will not solve anything; it will just make things more complicated.

You Live Paycheck to Paycheck – These days when people are being laid off, living pay check to pay check is nothing unusual. However, you need to make sure that as you are living this way, you do not throw your money away by purchases items that you really do not need. Sometimes people get really caught up in spending and wanting things that they just don’t realize how much money they are throwing away. If you do live pay check to pay check, try to save as much money as you can. Instead of wasting money on something you do not really need, put it into your savings account instead.

You Are Surprised By Your Credit Card Bill Each Month – If your credit card bill surprises you, then you definitely have a spending problem that you should work on. You should be keeping track of your spending (especially on credit cards) so that you do not get yourself into a great deal of debt that you cannot get yourself out of. Make sure to cut back on your spending so that you are confident that when your credit card bill arrives you will have the money to pay it off.