You don’t need money to be happy, but having it can certainly help you to improve various aspects of your life, whether that’s your living conditions or how much time you can spend on certain hobbies. However, there are a few ways you can positively change your life on a shoestring budget.
Below, we’ll give you some ideas so you can work on making a positive change without spending a fortune. Take a look:
1. Be Choosy About Who You Spend Time With
It costs nothing to be choosy about who you spend the most time with. You may not be able to cut ties with toxic family members completely, but if you try to spend more time with positive people who support your endeavors, you should notice a huge difference in your life. We become like the people we spend the most time with, so if you spend time with toxic people you’ll struggle to stay positive and achieve what you want to achieve. Make sure you pick who let into your inner circle carefully.
2. Work On Your Mindset
Your mindset is the most important thing for making the changes you want to make. As Henry Ford once said, ‘whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.’ A belief that you can achieve anything you set your mind to and the willingness to take inspired action is key. Things like meditation and consistent mindfulness will help with this, so try to become self aware and get into a good routine.
3. Read More
Books can be expensive, but if you have an e-reader you can often find great deals. Ebooks can usually be found for a fraction of the price of physical books, especially if they’ve been out for a while. Then, you have the library where you can take books out for free. You may also be able to arrange book swaps with friends if you have friends who enjoy reading, too. Reading can help you to expand your mind, learning new things, and can even just be an enjoyable pastime.
4. Move House
Is your neighborhood safe? Do you have peace of mind at home? If not, it could be time to move house. Moving house isn’t cheap, but you could consider downsizing to save money in the future if you could do with putting more money away. You’ll need to look into various services, such as hiring movers and companies like Carsrelo.com to get your belongings safely to your new location. Moving to a new home may be beneficial if you’d like your kids to have access to better schools, so consider whether this could benefit them, too.
5. Get Active At Home
You don’t need a gym membership to get fit, nor do you need to spend any money whatsoever, unless you want to buy a few simple pieces of equipment to use at home. You can use YouTube to learn different exercises and routines, and as long as you’re consistent you can improve your fitness. Even walking more than you do now can help to improve your fitness levels, so don’t feel like you need to spend a ton of money to get into shape. Personal trainers, equipment, and gym memberships are entirely optional.
6. Simplify Your Life
Could you potentially simplify your life to make a positive impact on how you live now? Maybe you could have a clear out and sell your items to make money on things that you no longer want. A simple life will give you space in your home and if you get into the right mindset, you won’t feel under pressure to buy things to keep up with friends or people on Instagram. When you let go of the need to have the latest home accessories, gadgets, and clothes, you’ll save so much money and probably feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.
7. Get Creative
How about getting creative? Hobbies are a great way to enjoy life, learn new things, and even meet new people. You never know what a hobby could bring you! See if you can find some cheap arts and crafts supplies or get creative with things you already have at home. Spending more time on your hobbies, whatever they may be, will always make you feel better than focusing on all work and no play.
8. Keep A Journal
Journaling has so many benefits, and there are all kinds of ways you can do this. You could try stream of consciousness journaling, where you just write whatever comes out without censoring yourself. Then, there’s bullet journaling. You don’t need to write beautiful paragraphs of prose for every entry. Stop judging yourself and thinking about the outcome, and instead enjoy the process of journaling and the benefits that can offer you.
9. Utilize YouTube
YouTube is a wonderful resource for people who want to learn new things and expand their minds. You can buy cheap online courses, but Youtube can be a great place to get the basics and figure out if a hobby is something you’d like to stick with long term before investing more money.
10. Know Your Priorities
When you know what your priorities are, you can figure out what’s worth spending money on and what you should probably avoid. If one of your priorities is spending quality time with your family, then you know you can afford to spend a little more money on that. You can’t prioritise everything at once, and your priorities may change depending on the stage you’re at in your life, or even the season.
11. Be Mindful Of How You Speak
When you speak, you can end up speaking things into existence. If you knew how powerful your words were, you’d probably use them far more carefully! Your life can change drastically when you stop complaining, judging others, and being mean to yourself. It can take a while to break a long habit of speaking negatively, especially when most other people still do this unconsciously. Become more conscious of the language you use and why and you’ll have a better chance of changing it.