Habit forming & shock factor

Taking a look at the wider FinTech space, I have been interested to see how my fiancé uses Nude (a savings app for buying a home) to analyse their spending according to the timeline to buying a house. E.g. if they stop spending on Wasabi, they can buy a house 3 months sooner.

I tried to use the shock factor to change my lifestyle, e.g. calculating my coffee obsession over a year to try and cut back on coffee, or using IFTTT to fine myself each time I spend at Starbucks for example.

Has anyone had any success with either financial betterment or lifestyle betterment with similar ideas? I would love to hear your examples.

Snoop summarised a certain food (&drink) establishment to a 4 figure sum over 1 year & a half…

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Wow, that’s a lot of golden arches, or chicken, or…

Deliveroo was our biggest pain so I’ve deleted it.

Golden question @Rexx - Did it make you change your habit?

Well - it does include certain beverages also…

Not as of yet - as it’s still the cheaper option compared to other places…

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I’ve just done some calculations on Slack with my colleagues. If I give up buying coffee for 12 weeks, I can pay for return flights and 7 nights in St Kitts in September. This is the sort of motivation that works for me.

Monday starts day 1 of coffee withdrawal headaches. :desert_island::beach_umbrella::briefs:

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Wowzers! How much coffee are you drinking?!

Only 2 cups a day. But that’s £7.30 a day and over 12 weeks that’s £630 which still gives me change for St Kitts. It’s just habit as much as it is addiction. I hope from Monday to start breaking it :slight_smile:

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Ahhh! That’s crazy money. Get an aeropress and make your own forever :+1:

I have a machine… it’s just laziness. I’ve been asked to give up coffee for a few months anyway so it will be a good test.

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This is great @jase I hadn’t thought to use IFTTT as a fine rather than a reward - now that we’re back in an office I could fine myself for grabbing a meal deal instead of making lunch :thinking:

Let us know how you get on! :slight_smile:

@RobD - You can see my first attempt didn’t last long. After 3 times of getting a harassing phone call and money moved, I switched it off.

I have since made the fines more subtle and move the money each week to savings. Sort of like my own congestion charge :ok_hand::joy:

I’m on day 5 of no coffee and thankfully my team haven’t suffered too much. I still make awesome “dad jokes” and hang around the coffee machine.

Where have you wanted to travel to next? How many meal deals is that? :wink:

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Annoying! :frowning:

Love this, I think we may be very similar in our respective offices :grin:

I’ve actually just come back from Lisbon for a long weekend - to which I dived in to my ‘Travelling’ savings pot. I use the rainy day IFTTT rule - so thinking about all those rainy days in lockdown made those pastel de natas in the sun even sweeter!

Alexa, book a flight to Portugal!

You could use something arbitrary like the weather to decide on making food at home vs a meal deal. If the UV index is below X, move £3 from savings for my meal deal. It could run at 7am so you’d have time to make food if needed.

My best dad joke this week was after a meeting with the Illegal Money Lending Team for England, who told us about an ice cream man acting as a loan shark. I said “he should have his assets frozen!”

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@RobD - Someone in the office just gave me a pastel de natas!

What a way to start my week off :slight_smile:

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