Spend Like You Mean It: Learning To Finally Feel In Control

There is a moment most adults experience but rarely admit. It might happen while you are standing in Tesco holding a basket of completely ordinary items that somehow cost the GDP of a small island. Or it might hit the second you open your banking app, see the number, and feel personally betrayed. You stare at the screen thinking you honestly have no idea how this happened because you barely went anywhere and barely bought anything. Yet here we are again. Confusion. Irritation. A suspicion that someone must have hacked your account and spent it all on snacks.

If that sounds like you, welcome. Spend Like You Mean It is a space where money is talked about realistically. No guilt. No perfectionism. No minimalist purity tests. Just honest conversation about how humans actually behave with money.

Because the problem is never that people are lazy or irresponsible. Most people are exhausted, juggling too much, and trying to stay afloat in a world where everything feels expensive and overwhelming. Money is tangled up with stress, habits, emotions, daily pressures and learned patterns that often start before you can even remember. So when advice online tells you to “just be disciplined” or “stop buying coffee,” it is already missing the point.

Money is not separate from the rest of your life. It sits inside it. Right next to your energy levels, your mood, your habits, your need for comfort, your responsibilities, your hopes for the future, your fears from the past and your desire to feel in control. That is why traditional advice often falls flat. It treats people like calculators, not humans.

Spend Like You Mean It exists to make finance feel human again. Practical. Grounded. Non extreme. Based on how people really live.

The biggest truth to understand is this: most people do not have a spending problem. They have a clarity problem. Once you understand that, everything shifts.

The clarity problem

If you ask most adults how much they spent on food, subscriptions, takeaways or random “errand” purchases last month, they will give you a confident answer that is usually quite wrong. This is not because people are careless. It is because modern life is full of tiny decisions that slowly chip away at your capacity to keep track of anything.

Your brain is not built to remember every tap of your card while also dealing with work, family, stress, endless admin and the general chaos of being a grown up. When you are stretched thin, your brain defaults to whatever is quickest and easiest. This is why you buy a £9 meal deal instead of cooking. Why you order takeaway when the day has already defeated you. Why you forget which subscriptions are still active. Why the same patterns repeat even when you are trying to be “good”.

None of this is about willpower. It is about the fact that your mind can only hold so much information at once. Clarity removes the guesswork. When you know where your money actually goes, your decisions stop being powered by panic or confusion. You suddenly have a clear picture instead of vague anxiety.

Looking at three months of real spending is usually the moment everything clicks. It is not comfortable, but it is incredibly freeing. Once you have data, the fog lifts. You understand yourself. You see what genuinely costs you money. You spot the patterns. You stop blaming yourself and start planning better.

Why “spend less” has never helped

The advice to simply spend less is unhelpful because it expects people to live with constant self control. And that does not work for anyone long term. When you are tired or stressed, your brain is wired to choose convenience. This is a survival mechanism, not a flaw.

You cannot force yourself into perfect behaviour every day. You cannot ignore your energy limits. You cannot shame yourself into consistency. And you absolutely cannot budget your way out of a life that does not account for tiredness, routine chaos or emotional needs.

What works instead is designing your money so it needs fewer decisions from you. The less you have to think, the easier it becomes. This is where intentional spending comes into the picture. Not as a strict system, but as a calm one.

What spending with intention actually looks like

Contrary to popular belief, intentional spending is not about cutting everything fun or becoming a minimalist sage who owns four items and lives peacefully among them. Intentional spending is simply the practice of choosing where your money goes rather than letting it disappear in the background.

It is based on three quiet principles.

The first is awareness without panic. You cannot change what you cannot see. Awareness is not judgement. It is a tool. Once you know your real spending, the sense of chaos decreases. Panic loses power. You become more in control because you understand what is happening instead of guessing.

The second principle is spending in alignment with the life you actually have. A huge amount of accidental overspending happens because people shop for their imagined future self. The self who cooks every evening. The self who reads every book purchased. The self who magically becomes organised with the right planner. Buying for that version of you is expensive. When you start spending for the person you are today, the leaks reduce instantly.

The third principle (my favourite) is using systems that lower the mental load. Automatic transfers. Sinking funds. Separate pots. A small buffer for “life happens” moments. These systems do not restrict you. They protect you. They stop you having to make dozens of decisions you do not have the energy for. They hold you up, rather than forcing you to hold everything yourself.

When these three things are in place, spending becomes calmer. You do not feel out of control anymore. And interestingly, intentional spenders often enjoy their money more because it is being used with purpose instead of panic.

Why this approach beats saving alone

Saving is important but saving alone does not solve the real issue. You can have a strict month where you push yourself to spend as little as possible. But if your patterns and habits stay the same, you will fall back into old routines the moment life gets stressful again.

The goal is not temporary control. It is long term stability. Intentional spending gives you stability because it changes how you think, not just what you do. It reduces emotional spending. It stops binge and restrict cycles. It makes your financial life steadier, which in turn makes your emotional life steadier.

People who grew up around money stress often feel uncomfortable talking about money or even looking at it. They feel on edge. They feel behind. They feel as though something bad might happen at any time. Intentional spending helps untangle these feelings by building a structure your mind trusts. When money feels predictable, your nervous system calms down. And when you are calmer, your decisions improve without extra effort.

Money becomes a tool instead of a threat.

The human side of spending

Every financial pattern has a human root. You might overspend because you are soothing stress. Because you fear missing out. Because you hate disappointing people. Because you were taught to grab things while they are available. Because shopping feels like control when life feels chaotic. Because the brief dopamine hit is the easiest emotional relief you can get.

When you start to notice your patterns, spending becomes understandable rather than mysterious. Understanding yourself takes the shame away. You stop thinking “I’m terrible with money” and start thinking “I see why I did that, and I can work with it now.”

For me, I noticed I started to hoard food following the pandemic. During the darkest days of lock down, I was at the mercy of whatever my husband brought home from the supermarket. The moment I could re-enter, my cupboards quickly started to overflow. It is only since early 2025 that this has started to calm down.

Spend Like You Mean It exists to help you understand the human piece, not to judge it. Once you understand yourself, you can design your money around your real needs, not unrealistic expectations.

Autonomy is the real end point

The goal here is not to make you frugal or rigid. It is to give you autonomy. Financial autonomy means choosing your life instead of being dragged around by unexpected expenses, emotional reactions or confusion.

When you spend intentionally, you stop sleepwalking through your financial life. You become the one steering the ship. Money stops feeling like something that happens to you and starts feeling like something you actively manage.

This brings relief. Clarity. Confidence. A sense that you can handle things. A sense that your money finally has direction.

That is the entire purpose of Spend Like You Mean It. To make your financial life feel calmer. To help you understand your patterns. To help you build stable systems. And to give you the tools to make decisions that feel aligned with your real life.