Spend more on what you love and cut the rest: choosing your priorities
Cutting 5% across the board changes nothing and makes you miserable. Better to decide what truly matters, spend more on it and trim the rest without regret.
The problem with cutting everything
Many couples try to save by trimming a bit of everything: fewer restaurants, less fuel, a smaller shop. After a month nothing has changed and you feel judged. It's like a cook who reduces every ingredient equally: the dish gets worse and is no longer recognisable.
The alternative is to choose. There are a few items you gladly spend on and many you spend on out of habit. Raising the first and sharply lowering the second gives more satisfaction for the same money.
The two dials
- Items to raise: what you truly love (not just "like"). For many: eating out, travel, wellbeing and sport, loved ones, learning something.
- Items to lower: everything that doesn't appear in your vision of life. A car dearer than needed, forgotten subscriptions, impulse buys.
The two partners needn't share the same items: it's normal for them to differ.
How to find them
- Scroll through the photos on your phone: what have you photographed in recent months? A dish, a sunset, a workout reveal what you love.
- Pick the two or three that move you most.
- Then ask: if you had €25,000 free, what would you use it for?
The quadruple-it exercise
Ask yourself: what would happen if I quadrupled my spending on this item? The instinctive answer is linear: "I'd eat out four times a week". Push further: what if you chose a few extraordinary restaurants and took your parents, who couldn't afford them? You move from quantity to quality, experience and the people you share it with. The question often shifts from "what do I buy?" to "who do I share it with?".
Where cuts have the most effect
- Housing and cars: the heaviest items and the hardest to change.
- Eating out and takeaways: often hundreds of euros a month and rarely what we picture in the ideal life.
- Invisible costs: unused subscriptions, grocery shopping without a list, hidden travel costs.
It is better to choose two categories and cut them by 50% over six months, about 10% a month, than to cut ten things at once.
How to talk about it as a pair
Open like this: "I read that it helps to decide what we love spending on. For me one is ___. What about you?" Minimum goal: one item and one example each, then stop. For cuts, don't turn up with a list of eighteen things: be the first to offer something from your own spending, and ask with curiosity before offering solutions ("why do we order takeaway on Thursdays?"). If the numbers add up, accept with enthusiasm even a purchase that doesn't convince you: don't play the enforcer.
If you see it differently
Three questions help: who decides on that item? What are the numbers? And above all: does it fit the life we have chosen and can we afford it? If so, let's do it.
To give all this a structure, see the conscious spending plan.
Want your numbers, not an example's?
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