Psychology of expense management

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Our financial behavior is continually motivated by two conflicting forces: the temptation to buy and spend money as opposed to the fear that the money will run out.

HandWallet will allow you to get to know yourself better, to understand and to balance the two forces within yourself and to bring you to a state of better personal equilibrium between these two forces. Using this program you will have more income available, and you will perform your expenses in a more efficient manner. The result of both of these is "more money", or in other words a better state of personal equilibrium.

Although this will not bring you happiness (we believe that happiness is an internal matter that doesn't depend on anything, certainly not on material things) yet it will enable you to enjoy the purchasing process more and will vacate your time for more important occupations than arguing with your bank clerk.

The Temptation to Buy . . .

The perpetual need to spend money is easy to understand. It stems from a number of reasons at the foundation of which lies the world of prosperity that we live in, the Western culture in whose lap we were brought up, the plentiful advertisements that overwhelm us and the competitive and comparative side of out characters.

The first step is to understand the temptation to buy and not to deny it. The temptation to buy is both good and natural. It proves that something is important for you and attracts you.
You can be a computer freak (who is "dying" to play with the newest model that has just come out onto the market) or a swell kid (who is "dying" to try on the most modern line of swimsuits that just appeared on the fashion channel). You might be a restaurant lover (facing a special restaurant) or an insect collector (facing a rare find) . . .
It will appear accompanied by a number of sentences, such as "I have to have it" "That's exactly what I was looking for", and this will usually also be accompanied by a silencing of the other force: "We received some money not long ago", "I can afford it", "We restricted ourselves last month, we deserve a purchase now".

The Fear that the Money will Run Out

This is also easy to understand. It stems (how surprising!) from that same world of prosperity, that same Western culture and those same advertisements, credit sales and sophisticated sales methods.
Once, when we used to make a living from agriculture, we knew exactly what we had. Today we are forced to cope with an assortment of abstract and confusing terms: credit, interest, overdraft, fund, linkage... and that only misleads, and even pressurizes.

Once we have understood the impulse to buy, the second step is to understand the fear that the money will run out and not to deny it. This fear is realistic. The money is after all finite: it doesn't matter how many payments you have been allowed, they all have to be paid in the end. It doesn't matter what loan you have received, your situation now (if you don't alter anything) is only more difficult because in addition to your regular expenses you also have to repay it . . .
It doesn't matter what your incomes are - since your expenses and level of lifestyle are always more or less in accordance. It also doesn't matter what your status is and to what extent you are established - you will always be accompanied by this same feeling, with regard to different things and different sums.

What Should you Do? HandWallet

Let's increase the amount of money -
By locating all the mistakes, the duplicate payments and the fraudulent dealing that may be taking place on our credit cards.
By forgoing the expenses that are found to be expensive and don't provide us with satisfaction.

I do this anyway. Why do I need HandWallet?
Perhaps. But you work hard at it. And you fight with yourself. In other words you are not objective because of the two forces having a running battle inside of you.

Does this mean that now I'll have to enter every penny I spend into the app?
Of course not. Small expenses that do not accumulate (its worthwhile, at least at first, to check this) are usually not significant and therefore they will not cause any significant saving. It's up to you to decide what to enter and what not.
Moreover, most of the expenses will be directly updated from the Internet sites of the various banks and credit cards, and all that is left to do is only to affirm them and to attribute them to a category (if you wish to do so). This action takes a few minutes every month and it replaces going over the data sheets that you receive by post, as you would do anyway.