7 mistakes that make us lose money

1. Impulsive buying

Surely you have at least once found yourself leaving a store with bags of things that you were not going to buy. Everything somehow happened by itself: I saw it, I wanted it, I took it to the checkout. Here is a trifle, there is a trifle - as a result, a decent amount runs up, which could be spent on something useful or simply put into a piggy bank.

Planning and making a shopping list can help you break this habit. If you go to the supermarket for food for dinner, don't buy anything extra. In fact, you get a route that you should follow in the store: let's say, first in the vegetable shop, then in the section with chilled convenience foods, and finally for dairy products. Less aimless walks - less chance of buying something unnecessary.

In order not to leave the temptation even a single chance, introduce a rigid rule: in stores, pay only in cash.

Calculate in advance how much money you need and withdraw this amount from the card. If you collect more than planned, you will have to go to the ATM again. People are by nature quite lazy, so chances are you might prefer to just empty the basket out.

2. Excessive consumption

People buy a lot more things than they really need. Practice shows that much of what we dreamed about after the purchase is idle. A game bought on the Steam sale that you are unlikely to play, another lipstick that you liked from a beauty blogger, but risking to settle like a dead weight in a box of cosmetics - these are all excesses that can be painlessly discarded.

As in the case of impulse purchases, you have to pump discipline. If you really want something, but there is no obvious need for it, take a break for reflection.

For goods worth about 100 rubles, a day of thought is enough. With things that cost several thousand rubles, wait at least a week.

There is a chance that by the end of this period you will forget about the purchase, which seemed almost vital.

3. The wrong approach to saving money

Even if you are determined to regularly save some amount in the box, there is a high probability that this venture will eventually fail. Keeping money in cash is not a good idea. While you can freely withdraw funds from the stash at any time and spend them on something, there can be no question of a reasonable approach to savings. In addition, there is no sense in just lying money: sooner or later, inflation will raise it up substantially.

The easiest option is to get a bank card with an interest on the balance. The bank will regularly charge you money simply for the fact that there is a certain amount on your account. Firstly, this is an incentive not to touch your savings once again, and secondly, they will gradually grow without your participation.

4. Refusal to search for profitable options

Often, when planning a purchase, we prefer not to waste time and choose the most convenient option. Well, if you don't want to waste time, you have to spend money.

When thinking about a major purchase, whether it be household appliances or clothes that will last you more than one season, study all the possible offers. It is possible that buying an item in an online store, even taking into account the cost of delivery, will be more profitable than offline. Watch out for promotions in supermarkets, especially when it comes to household chemicals and shelf-stable products.

However, it is important not to go to the other extreme: there is no need to go through the whole city to buy buckwheat in a hypermarket on the outskirts for 20 rubles cheaper than in a store near the house. Calculate how much you will spend on the road. Perhaps the game won't be worth the candle.

5. Love of dubious savings

Shopkeepers don't hesitate to cash in on our drive to save money. “Buy three bottles of milk for the price of two” is kind of profitable, why not? If you really drink or use all this milk for cooking, then no problem. If the product goes bad, the money is wasted.

We buy food to throw it away. With the same success, you can get a wad of money out of your wallet and set it on fire, it will turn out even more spectacular.

Before heading into the supposedly incredibly lucrative promotions, consider whether you really need the additional goods you receive.

It is not wiser to buy exactly as much as you need, so as not to puzzle over what to do with the leftovers?

Another fun from the evil one is promotions, during which you need to collect stickers for purchases in order to eventually exchange them with a surcharge for a set of knives. For fun, look for a similar set in an online store and compare its cost to how much you have to leave in the store to collect the required number of stickers.

6. Striving for easy money

The desire for profit completely deprives us of common sense. By discarding sensible investment options, we choose risky ones that, in theory, can make a lot more money. But this is only in theory.

Internet exchanges, which have now grown like mushrooms after a rain, vied with each other to assure that absolutely anyone can invest. You can't argue here: everyone can really invest in a dubious enterprise, it is much more difficult to earn something or at least stay with their own people.

Unless you are an expert in securities or cryptocurrency trading, take a sober view of your chances of success. Most likely, they will be small.

The takeaway is obvious: don't try to win a game you don't know the rules for.

It is better to use more conservative, but safe instruments, at least the same bank deposits.

7. Low level of financial literacy

This is the main of all the mistakes listed above: we were simply not taught how to handle money correctly. We had to master the art of financial management on our mistakes, losing savings and stepping on the same rake over and over again.

“Mistakes that cause us to lose money and how to avoid them” is the topic of the second open lecture in the “Financial Environment” series, which will take place on September 27. We will talk about cognitive biases, personality traits and social factors that make us waste money. Anna Solodukhina, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Candidate of Political Sciences and an expert of the Public Opinion Foundation Lyudmila Presnyakova and blogger Ksenia Paderina will tell you what mistakes we make under pressure from the environment and how social status and attitudes towards the state affect our financial behavior and trust.

The lecture will be held in library number 67 (Moscow, VDNKh, Argunovskaya st., 14, bldg. 2), the event starts at 19:00. Admission to the lectures of the cycle "Financial Environment" is free, but the number of places is limited, so register in advance.