Saving money and building wealth for your future doesn’t happen without a few sacrifices along the way. Small changes to your lifestyle and being mindful of your bad habits can have a big impact on how much you’ve got left over at the end of the week.

At the same time, with the constant toils of everyday life, it can be difficult to keep across everything you should be doing, and some less-productive routines can emerge. Here are 10 financial habits that can eat away at your hard-earned money and keep you poor.

Not keeping a budget is a classic way to lose track of your hard-earned.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

1. Refusing to budget. If your money isn’t allocated to a specific task when it hits your account, you’re far more likely to spend it without having anything to show for it.

Create a budget that buckets your money, starting with essential spending such as housing, utilities, insurance, petrol and groceries, and make sure you’re leaving something to add into your emergency fund.

2. Not having an emergency fund. I’m a big fan of US money guru Dave Ramsey, who went from broke to an estimated $200 million in net worth, building his own system for wealth creation that he now shares with the world.

His first step to getting out of debt is to save $1000 for your starter emergency fund, which will keep you from getting into debt when life happens.

The next step is to pay off any debt you may have from smallest to........

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