Impulsive purchases can quietly eat away tens or even hundreds of thousands of tenge a year. Coffee on the way to work, sweets, food delivery, spontaneous trips to a restaurant, or 'you only live once' purchases often seem like small expenses, but over time they hinder building savings, reports infohub.kz.
Financial expert Sultan Yelemesov, in a podcast with tax and finance specialist Dmitry Kazantsev, proposed an unusual way to combat such spending. Instead of completely banning purchases, he advises that every time an emotional expense occurs, immediately invest the same amount.
According to the expert, the idea is that after each unplanned purchase, you buy a money market exchange-traded fund for the same amount, which, as Yelemesov notes, tracks the yield of Kazakhstani government securities.
"Spending 2,000 tenge on coffee seems normal. But when you realize you need to invest another 2,000 right away, that's already 4,000. At that moment, you really feel the loss of money. You start to think whether you really need this purchase," he explains.
The financier said he tested this approach for a month. According to him, the experiment showed that even with good financial discipline, emotional spending is more than it seems at first glance. In his case, the main unplanned expenses were related to restaurant visits and food purchases.
Yelemesov believes that this method helps not only reduce the number of impulsive purchases but also gradually build investment capital. While a person learns to control their spending, the amount of investments grows in parallel.
Speaking about the first steps in investing, the expert recommends not rushing to invest large sums. In his opinion, getting acquainted with the stock market should happen gradually, just as most people once started using bank deposits.
He notes that beginners only need to start with a small amount to understand how the instrument works without feeling a strong fear of losing money. As experience accumulates, you can gradually expand your portfolio, adding not only deposits and real estate but also index funds, which allow you to invest in a broad market without picking individual companies.