Market Performance: December 13, 2023.

U.S. stock futures ticked higher Tuesday night as investors await the Federal Reserve’s latest policy decision.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose by 51 points, or 0.14%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 0.14% and 0.18%, respectively. Investors are coming off a fourth straight positive session for the major averages. During the regular session Tuesday, the S&P 500 gained 0.46% and the 30-stock Dow added 0.48%. Both indexes hit their highest intraday levels since January 2022.

The Nasdaq Composite , which reached its highest level since April 2022, closed with a 0.7% jump.

How to stop spending

There’s no need to stop spending for the sake of it. If you enjoy a cappuccino, can afford it, aren’t in debt and aren’t overpaying, sip away.

There are two ways to check if you’re spending more than you earn.

The BIG danger signal. Are you in debt?

If you are, and can’t answer the question 'what are your debts from?' there’s a problem. If you didn’t buy, for example, a car or a conservatory, but you've used cards or loans to fill gaps, an ear-piercing alarm should ring.

Debt is fine if it is planned, rational, budgeted for and as cheap as possible. But if you consistently need to use the credit cards to supplement your monthly spend, you have a problem. Do that, and it can have life-destroying consequences.

If you are spending more than you earn, there’s a simple way to accurately check. The specially designed Budget Planner calculates your genuine annual income and then tells you exactly how much more you spend than you earn.

Supermarket shopping tips

A supermarket's job is to make us spend

Supermarkets are cathedrals of consumerism. They're perfectly honed marketing environments, benefiting from millions of pounds of research into how to encourage and seduce us into buying and spending more than we should. This means as consumers, we must learn counter moves.

If you want to teach an eight-year-old about money, the best place to start is a supermarket. Ask them what they can smell. It'll usually be bread or a bakery, as the scent makes us hungry and likely to buy more food, so the supermarket profits.

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