sanket.bachke@gmail.com 
We’ve all said it at some point — “I deserve this.”
It sounds harmless, even justified. After a long week of work, stress, or just dealing with life, spending money feels like a reward. But this simple phrase is one of the biggest reasons people quietly overspend every month.
The “I deserve this” spending trap isn’t about big purchases. It’s about small, repeated decisions that slowly wreck your budget without you noticing.
There is something weird that happens during the last week before payday.
You know you are running low on money. You know your next paycheck is only a few days away. And somehow, that is exactly when your spending gets worse.
At least, that is how it always goes for me.
Every month, I tell myself I’m going to spend less money.
And every month, I somehow end up paying for takeout because I’m “too tired to cook,” buying something random online because it was “basically free with the discount,” and grabbing a coffee that costs more than the groceries sitting untouched in my fridge.
So this month, I decided to do something different.
Most people think the holidays are the most expensive time of year.
And sure, November and December can absolutely destroy your bank account.
But summer has a sneaky way of doing the exact same thing — just in smaller amounts that are easier to ignore.
You are not buying gifts or paying for giant holiday dinners. Instead, you are spending a little more here, a little more there, until suddenly your credit card bill shows up and you have no idea where all your money went.
You probably have not said, “I want to ruin my finances.” But you may have said something that quietly does the same thing:
“I’ll figure it out later.”
People say it when they put off opening a credit card statement, starting a budget, saving for retirement, cancelling subscriptions, or finally looking at how much they actually spend every month.
The problem is that “later” almost always becomes more expensive.
For years, people are told the same budgeting advice: track every penny, clip coupons, drive across town for sales, meal prep an entire week, and never buy anything convenient. But eventually, a lot of people realize that some of these “money-saving” habits save very little and cost a lot of time, energy, and sanity.
By the time people reach their 50s, many realize that their biggest money mistakes were not huge disasters. More often, they were small decisions repeated for years. Waiting too long to save, carrying debt for decades, ignoring retirement planning, and assuming there would always be more time are some of the regrets that show up again and again.
Weekends are supposed to be a break from work — but for your wallet, they often become the most expensive part of the week.
From eating out and shopping to spontaneous plans and “just this once” spending, weekends have a way of quietly increasing your expenses without you even noticing.
And the tricky part? It doesn’t feel like overspending in the moment.
If you’ve ever looked at your bank statement and wondered where your money went, there’s a good chance a lot of it disappeared… at night.
Late-night food orders, impulse online shopping, random subscriptions — spending tends to spike after the sun goes down. And the worst part? Most of it doesn’t even feel intentional.
If your grocery bill feels higher than ever lately, you’re not imagining it.
Even though inflation headlines suggest things are “cooling,” food prices haven’t really gone back down. That’s because when prices rise, they tend to stay elevated rather than drop back to old levels.
On top of that, groceries are affected by multiple factors — from rising labor and transportation costs to weather disruptions and supply chain issues — all of which keep prices stubbornly high.