The inconvenient cost of too much convenience.

I slashed a credit card in half not long ago. 

It wasn’t mine; I found it at the top of the escalator at St Pancras, no doubt dropped by a commuter getting on an earlier Southeastern train. After reporting it lost, I did what Customer Service told me and disposed of it straight away.

I wish I’d do the same with my own, given my reflex to swipe it constantly when I leave home. Opportunities to spend come at me thick and fast, and I seem to have lost the mechanism that allowed me to say “No”.

There’s a POST-IT inside one of my kitchen cupboards, it says, “I’m at war with the shops downstairs”. I placed it there last year after looking at my monthly statements and finding an obscene amount spent on God knows whats. I asked my bank to not send me print statements anymore and told myself I’d get the habit under control. I like to think I’ve saved a tree, as I’ve not saved the pound.

I don’t recall being so relaxed about spending when cash was Charles III. When cash was King.

When you had to tap your PIN to ensure the transaction went through. When you could not delay the cost of the spend and had to deal with its impact straight away.

Evolving is important, but it feels like we’ve removed all the psychological barriers from the process of spending, and we’re leaking money from all sides.

The cost of too much convenience.

I’m therefore putting a question to the Universe: would it be useful to add some friction back into the process and curtail invisible, unconscious spending?

The kind that drips out of the pockets of many every month, as they purchase coffee, lunch, after-work drinks, too many takeaways or forget to cancel unused subscriptions.

There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of what’s on offer, and I’m not after complete restraint. It’s unrealistic in the first place. I’m after the B word. I’m after Balance.

After getting the coffee but also seeing what repeated coffee rounds could add up to during the month so I have the chance to wisely review my decision.

Every little inconvenience helps.

Banks have responded to the need for financial planning by building budget tools. This is helpful, but I can argue that I’m fully aware of my standard outgoings.

There’s also a round-up economy, turning everyday spending into smart saving or investment. It’s what Moneybox and Sprive, a newcomer rounding up spend towards faster mortgage payments, are doing.

I don’t need to hear kerching every time a transaction goes through either. The sound will metamorphosise into an ambulance rushing down the motorway fast enough.

There’s a category of apps designed to hone in on financial waste, the type I asked my bank to keep away from sight last year. I’ve been looking at Snoop, and the insights for the past two years are terrifying, however not as problem-solving, long-span oriented as I need them to be.

It would appear a full solution is not there yet.

Ding, ding, ding, jackpot!

I need one of these apps, a high street or challenger brand, to analyse my spend, working across the budget that remains after what has been estimated for spend, screaming at the waste. The kind that flags transactions when I’ve overdone it on certain categories or merchants and shows me the long-term financial treat I could be benefiting from if I didn’t give into the daily one instead.

The pie in the sky, lottery-winning number that could be sitting in my bank account thirty years from now if it wasn’t slipping through my fingers on oat flat whites, Perriers, or dinners on Heddon Street.

The most important aspect of this magic tool is its voice. Rowan Atkinson-like in noticing unhealthy patterns. It operates between humour and sarcasm, drawing attention to the ridicule, with enough gentleness to encourage self-correction, not perfection.

Instead of kerching that money’s left my account, I’d like it to nudge:

“Well done, that’s your unborn daughter’s dowry out the window” so I take note.

“Do you want to continue?”

“Here’s what else you could be putting that cup of coffee towards.”

And week on week, congratulate me on my more conscious spending which has just saved me a quarter of a Business Class ticket to Milan Linate. That’s girl math that would be mathing.

An app or a bank that adds some conscious decision-making back into the spending process and strengthens consumer agency. Fair play in a market that prioritises smoothness for suppliers but may have left consumers too exposed and too untrained to respond. It would appear NatWest has built an AI- and voice-enabled tool that meets a portion of these queries. I’ll give it a try.

And so, until someone sprinkles a little Rowan Atkinson onto my bank statements and builds juuuust a bit of friction back into everyday spending,

I have an AMEX somewhere to chop up.

Unmistakably,

Irina