Hello Steemians,

So finally today I am talking about the cash diet, which is one of the thing that helped me a lot to start my journey to financial freedom.
I used to spend a lot of money in random shit and always bring my Debit and Credit card everywhere, along with my instant gratification issues it was the worst combo for me to be able to save anything so from the moment I had my first job till years ago my money hit and left my account in weeks if not days. No matter how much I made I will spend spend spend.

That was until I lost my job, my apartment and my handbag (ID, Debit and Credit card). Within a week I managed to get a new apartment and a part time job in a restaurant. So half of my income was paid in my bank account, the other half was paid in Cash. My rent was being taken from my bank account directly but then I had the rest of my salary paid cash in hand. It was not a lot so I had to learn to spend only my cash and mot use my bank account so much. So for 4 months that I worked there all my expenses will be spend in cash and at that time although I was paid 1/2 what I use to make I managed to save £ 1000 for the first time in my life (was living in London,UK at the time).

I then started another job and all my saving vanished as soon as I started using my cards again. So a few month later I decided to experiment a little. I will withdraw at the beginning of the month what I though was a reasonable amount of money to spend for my day-to-day expenses. There were a lot of hit and misses until I figured out how much I needed for a whole month. Now anytime I overspend for a couple of month I come back to following a cash diet to reset my finances.

What is a Cash Diet exactly

In short after you receive your salary, you need to withdraw all the money that you will need to pay for your everyday expenses, anything that is not taken automatically from your bank account or that absolutely need a card to pay with will have to be budgeted and withdrawn, then until your next salary get paid you need to only spend in cash.

**How will it help me ?

At first it is hard because we are not use to paying in cash for everything, because you will have to follow your budget and you will have to make sure that you have enough money left to make sure it lasts you the whole month.

So at first you will learn to follow a loose budget but still preventing you to spend more than what you allocated yourself. You will be more efficient when doing your grocery shopping (spending money on staples at the beginning of the month and then just topping up the following weeks).
It will also help you learn the value of things because it is much harder to pay something expensive in cash than with a credit card. You got to have a huge amount on yourself which makes you feel unsafe. You have to count and recount to make sure there is no mistake and potentially it can jeopardise the whole month.
And this is how it should be, we should evaluate and think about big purchases or any non-necessary purchases because those are the one preventing us to reach our financial goals.

Things I learned while following a cash diet

• I learned to follow a budget
• I learned to save money without overthinking it and without having to move the money out of my sight
• I can track how I am spending and where I am at during the month
• I know how much there is on my bank account at all times
• I know the things I want to spend my money on and the things that I don't deem worthy of my money
• No more impulse purchases

Have you ever done a cash diet ? Do you want to start doing one for your next pay cycle ? Please feel free to comment and share your experiences

See you tomorrow,

Elise