Tired of Struggling Financially? Sick of Being Broke? Do This

Are you tired of struggling financially and sick of having no money?

I’ve been in that exact situation. I was married to my job. I stayed late, took on extra projects, absorbed everything I could, and tried to learn all there was to know about the business I was in.

All that work and all those hours, yet I was always broke. The pace I was going at had me burnt out. I started questioning what it was all for and why I was doing what I was doing.

Was it about the money? If so, how come I had no money left at the end of the month? Why did I have all this debt and no savings?

That’s when I realized I had so many bad financial habits. No matter how hard I worked, the best I could do was live paycheck to paycheck. I would never get ahead unless something changed.

That something had to be me. I was so sick of being broke and tired of struggling with money. I knew I had to make major life changes and establish good money habits.

It was a long road. My wife had a similar hands-off approach to money management, and some of my bad habits carried over into our marriage. We fixed them together.

There were some bumps along the way, like unexpected expenses, family stuff, and job turbulence, but we’re in a much better place now.

What To Do If You Are Sick of Having No Money

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I’m struggling financially,” here are 13 things you can do when you’re tired of struggling financially and sick of having no money:

1. Start Tracking Your Spending

One common reason people find themselves broke is that they have no idea how much they spend daily, weekly, and monthly. I know because I was one of those people.

I knew my rent, cell phone bill, and student loan payments. I had an estimate in my head for how much I would spend on food, entertainment, clothes, gas, and other discretionary purchases.

If you’re sick of being broke, start tracking your expenses daily. If you’ve never tracked your spending, it’s an excellent first step. Seeing where your money goes will be an eye-opening and potentially life-changing experience.

I knew I was in for a big surprise within the first week of tracking my spending. After one month, my guesstimate was so far off from what I was actually spending that it was shocking and embarrassing.

How could I have been entirely out of touch with my habits? Easy.

I never reviewed my bank statements. I never paid attention to where my money went.

By tracking your spending, you’ll identify bad money habits you can eliminate and spending triggers you can avoid. Bad money decisions will be a thing of the past.

2. Make a Budget and Stick to It

The importance of budgeting was utterly lost on me. I used to think budgeting was a waste of time. Then again, my financial life was a mess.

I was living paycheck to paycheck. My monthly payments to credit card companies were usually late, so my credit score was laughable. I had no spare cash to invest and no emergency fund.

Setting up a monthly budget will lead you toward ending your financial struggles. A budget is simply a spending plan for your money. Budgeting gives you a roadmap for your money and ensures you spend according to your priorities.

Budgeting is a critical step in improving your financial life. Success with budgeting is all about sticking to it. Sticking to your budget is a matter of recognizing your priorities and spending accordingly.

3. Lower Your Expenses

Trim your monthly expenses. If you are sick of having no money, change your spending habits.

You’ve tracked your expenses. You’ve created a budget. Now, identify areas where you could spend less.

Reduce or eliminate spending on entertainment, dining out, subscriptions or memberships you don’t use, and anything else you can live without.

Look for phantom expenses that fly under the radar, like ATM charges or late fees. They add up, but you can avoid them with little effort.

Cut out expensive habits that don’t better your quality of life or financial situation. We all have bad habits. Some of them are terrible for our health and our checking accounts.

Smoking costs a lot of money. Drinking costs a lot of money. You can save a boatload of money over time if you quit a bad habit.

Slashing your expenses and living a frugal life can get your financial situation back on track. Just don’t obsess over little spending leaks and forget about trying to save on major expenses.

Certain unavoidable expenses take up a large percentage of your budget like housing, insurance payments, groceries, and transportation. Saving money on your major expenses is something you should investigate.

Lowering your weekly grocery budget will do more for your cash flow over time than canceling your Netflix account or reusing paper towels. If you can save on housing by renting a place that’s $100 cheaper than your current rent, that’s $1,200 back in your pocket. A difference of $100 probably won’t affect your quality of life very much.

Any extra cash you free up by reducing your spending can go toward your financial goals.

4. Draw a Clear Line Between Needs and Wants

It’s going to be hard to get your money under control without drawing a clear line between wants and needs.

Needs are things you must have to live, protect yourself from disaster, and stay employed. Wants are things that bring you joy or level up your lifestyle.

Sounds simple enough. The line blurs often, however.

Clothes are a need, but you don’t need to spend your entire paycheck on the latest fashions. You need a car to get to work. You could save up the cash for a safe, reliable used car that gets good gas mileage or you could get a loan for the gas-guzzling sports car with monthly payments that stretch your budget to the limit.

5. Cut Out Impulse Spending

Impulse purchases are hard to resist.

My wife and I have both gone into stores intending to buy one or two specific things, yet hit the checkout line with a cart full of stuff. We usually convinced ourselves we couldn’t pass stuff up because we saw it on sale.

But are you really getting a bargain when you buy something on sale you don’t really need or had no intention of buying? Of course not.

If you ask yourself how this purchase aligns with your goals before you whip out your debit card, you might walk away more often than not.

Another effective way of curbing impulse spending is calculating how many hours you have to work in order to buy whatever shiny object you’re drooling over. You can do this in your head at the store.

For example, if you make $15 per hour and you’re drawn to a $150 pair of Nikes, you know you’ll work at least 10 hours to pay for the shoes. More like 12 or 13 hours since you use your take-home pay for purchases, not your gross earnings.

If you buy the shoes, you’re donating a day and a half’s wages to Nike. Do you feel like crawling out of bed to put in a full day and a half of work at a job you don’t love so Nike can get richer? Does Nike need your business or do you need to be a better money manager?

When you think about buying stuff in those terms, the things tempting you might not look so attractive.

The desire for instant gratification is tough to ignore. You must learn to delay gratification if you’re tired of struggling financially. If you really want something like new shoes, save up for them.

6. Ask Yourself Why

If you’re broke all the time, start examining not just where you’re spending your money but also why. It’s one of the most important questions to ask before you buy something.

Asking why helps you understand your motivations for spending money. Our stated reasons for buying something might not always line up with our actual reason for buying it.

For example, my beautiful bride told people she bought an expensive dress for the bold design and flattering fit. If she was honest, she would’ve said she bought it because she wanted to make our snooty neighbor jealous at her holiday party.

Some might say normal people don’t think like that. But “keeping up with the Joneses” is a thing. So are buying stuff to project status to others and emotional spending.

I’ve fallen prey to it. Any normal person can. Ask yourself why you’re buying something before you buy it.

If the answer is you’re buying something so someone else feels jealous or thinks you’re super cool, do yourself a favor. Leave the store empty-handed.

7. Make Saving a Priority

If you’re sick of having no money, start saving money today. Everyone knows saving money is important, but that doesn’t make it easy.

The best way to start saving right away is to pay yourself first. That means every time you get a paycheck, put some money aside before you pay any bills or buy anything.

You can save money regardless of your income, even if you’re on a tight budget or living paycheck to paycheck. Put aside $10 or $20 or whatever you can every week.

Building the saving habit is more important than the dollar amount when you’re just starting. Try a no-spend challenge or one of these other fun money-saving challenges if it will help you build the habit.

Save what you can. You can always put more money in savings and start saving money more aggressively as your financial situation improves.

8. Build Your Emergency Fund

If you don’t have any savings, start by depositing what you can into a savings account you do not touch except for emergencies.

When you’re broke and struggling, a family emergency, a medical bill, or other unexpected expense can drive you into debt or even bankruptcy. Having an emergency fund will help you avoid making a bad situation even worse.

It’s best to have a three to six-month emergency fund, meaning three to six months’ worth of expenses safely tucked away. It would be wise to have over six months of expenses put away if your situation is less stable.

As someone who has been laid off more than once and is currently a contractor, I aim to have at least eight months’ worth of expenses saved. You don’t want to make your emergency fund too big, as overfunding your emergency savings could cause you to miss out on other financial opportunities.

You don’t have to come up with the money all at once. You can grow your emergency savings slowly. Start small and make sure money flows into your emergency fund every time you get paid until it reaches a comfortable level.

9. Pay in Cash

Automate your bills and savings, but pay for your routine everyday life in cash.

You can see and feel the money leaving your possession when you hand over paper money. Swiping a credit card or sticking your debit card in a machine doesn’t really feel like spending money. You’re more intentional and aware when you pay in cash, which makes you much less likely to overspend.

Stop using credit cards and use cash instead. Getting up to your ears in credit card debt, carrying a credit card balance month to month, and making minimum payments is an absolute waste of money. You’re living beyond your means if you can’t pay off your entire credit card balance when the bill comes.

What about debit cards? Aren’t they effectively the same as cash since you can’t spend money you don’t have with a debit card? While a debit card is more convenient, and you can’t spend more than you have in your account, there are drawbacks.

It’s easy to lose track of how much you’ve spent when you use your debit card for every purchase. If you put $100 cash in your wallet, when it’s gone, you know you spent $100. Knowing how much you spend is important if you’re sick of being broke and want to stop feeling that way.

Then there are security issues with debit cards like identity theft, card skimmers, retailers getting hacked, and other scams designed to get your card information. Someone once tried to use my debit card to make a large purchase on the Best Buy website, but luckily I noticed it in time.

10. Get Out of Debt

Some people consider certain debts, like student loans or a mortgage good debt and characterize other debts, like credit card debt, as bad debt. Debt is debt. Any type of debt can threaten your financial well-being.

Being in debt and making payments on it every month prevents you from getting the most out of your money. Imagine if you could put the total of your debt payments and credit card bills in an investment or savings account every month.

Debt also leads to feeling stressed about money all the time. Stress-related health problems are no joke.

Adding debt payments in with living expenses makes getting by that much harder. Constant financial stress can lead to serious health problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, insomnia, and more.

Get out of debt as quickly as possible if you’re tired of struggling financially. You’ll regain control of your money, feel better, and have more money to put toward things that matter to you. If you have a lot of credit card debts and are ready to aggressively pay off debt, the debt snowball and the debt avalanche are two strategies you should consider.

You could do the debt snowball, where you list your debts and make minimum payments on all but the one with the lowest balance. You throw as much as possible at that one until it’s paid off. Once it’s down to zero, you add the payment you were making to the minimum payment on your next lowest and continue up the ladder until you’re debt-free.

Obviously, when you’re only paying the minimum on all your debts except one, you will pay a lot of interest. The debt avalanche is a similar debt reduction strategy that works the same way, except for the order in which you retire your debts. The debt avalanche has you order your list of debts by interest rate, then focus on the balance with the highest interest rate first.

The debt snowball will lead to faster wins, which might be better for your motivation. The debt avalanche will have you paying less interest while you get out of debt, which is better for your wallet.

You can get out of debt using either strategy. Pick the one that appeals to you more.

11. Automate Your Finances

If I’ve learned anything from my experience of being broke all the time, it’s this: I don’t always make financially sound decisions.

It’s hard to force yourself to be responsible, pay bills on time, and stick to your budget when you’re struggling financially. You can eliminate temptation, save money every paycheck, and make sure your monthly payments go out on time by automating as much of your personal finances as possible.

Once you have a budget with money earmarked for savings, debt, and bill payments, set up auto bill pay and automatic transfers to your savings or investment accounts. Set these up to coincide with your paydays, so your bills get paid, you put money in savings, and you can only spend what’s left.

When your money goes where it’s supposed to without you being involved, the right financial decision is made every time. You’ll pay your bills on time automatically, and you remove the temptation to indulge in bad spending habits, like spending your gas money on drinks out with friends.

12. Increase Your Income

More money, more problems? Not when you’re broke and tired of struggling financially on your current income.

While reducing your spending is smart, you’ll get to a point where there’s nothing left to cut. Increasing your annual income is a potential solution if you’re tired of being broke. It’s difficult to do, but there is a wide range of opportunities you can explore to increase your salary or find an additional source of income.

Ask for a Raise at Work

Getting a raise is usually the fastest path to increasing your income, but it’s difficult. It’s nerve-wracking and awkward. A raise might not even be possible if you haven’t been at your job long or your company is not doing great.

Find a New Job

A new job doesn’t mean you need to switch careers and start all over again. Someone with more experience or seniority might block you from moving up at your current company. Or maybe your employer doesn’t value your work and you’re underpaid.

Sometimes the only way to get ahead is to seek opportunities at other companies with more responsibility or better pay. A new job might be in order if you’re tired of having no money.

Get a Second Job

Getting a second job requires sacrificing some of your free time to make extra money. A second job is a solid option for earning extra income as long as it doesn’t interfere with your primary full-time job, run you ragged, or prevent you from spending quality time with your family.

Sell Things for Extra Cash

You can raise extra money quickly by selling some of your stuff. If you’re like me, you probably have some things you don’t use or regret buying lying around in good condition. Someone else might want them.

You can have a garage sale, sell things on eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace, or actually make money on Poshmark selling used clothes. If you have furniture you don’t use or don’t want anymore, here are the best apps for selling used furniture.

If you have things you don’t use often but don’t want to get rid of, you can also make money renting out your stuff. People will pay to borrow your car, tools, even clothes, and other stuff. Here’s a list of things you can rent out for profit.

Start a Side Hustle

There are plenty of low-cost side hustles you could pick up that offer flexible hours and decent pay, including delivering food with DoorDash, tutoring, or using your existing skillset to freelance as a side business.

Having multiple income streams and making extra cash can help solve money issues just as well as cutting expenses. It’s not an either-or thing where you either reduce expenses or increase income. You can and probably should do both if you’re sick of having no money.

13. Exercise Patience and Persistence

Getting into a financial hole didn’t happen overnight. Don’t expect to claw your way out overnight. Financial stability takes time.

Regardless of your current situation, you can recover from tough times. You’ll have to make changes, big and small.

You need a plan. You need commitment. And you need patience.

If you’re tired of struggling financially, having no money, or sick of being broke despite working hard, take stock, build a plan, commit to it every day, and stick with it.

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