If you're a free spirit, try to:

• Do one thing to improve your finances each week. Review your budget, shop around for a better deal on your car insurance, pay an extra P500 to your credit card debt, round up your loose change and put it in savings.
• Let an app do the saving for you. There are numerous digital tools to link to your checking account to set up no-fuss automatic savings deposits.

Planned Spender

Defined by: A watertight budget, with saving included.

What it means for your money: You're saving regularly but may not be taking time out to enjoy the benefits of your efforts.

If you're a planned spender, try to:

• Add a line item to your budget for fun. Give yourself P500 or P1,000 per week or month to let your hair down.
• Make saving fun. Create a vision board of your savings goals, treat yourself to something small every time you add another P1,000 to savings, challenge yourself to not spend any unnecessary money for a week.

Secure Saver

Defined by: Saving money regularly but reluctance to spend any of it.

What it means for your money: Feeling nervous about spending any of your savings could be a sign that it's time to revisit your financial goals.

If you're a secure saver, try to:

• Set clear goals. Consider using a goal-oriented app or a savings-focused bullet journal to tie your savings goals and habits to the things you enjoy doing most.
• Create personal reminders of savings goals. For example, why not make your email password a reference to your goal? If you want to save P20,000 in your emergency fund, your password could be "Save20K." The act of repeatedly typing your savings mantra each time you log in may give you a mental boost you need to keep saving.

Before moving on, which of these types sounds like you? Identifying your spending personality and its associated pattern can help you develop positive new behaviors and habits with your money.

How to change your money habits (and make them stick)

Of course, uncovering your spending personality is the easy part. Altering its underlying habits is more involved.

"Once a behavior has become a habit," Newcomb says, "we aren't using our central command center anymore, but a different part of our brain. To break the habit means activating that conscious command center and violating the positive feedback-producing pattern that we're used to."

In other words, you have to retrain your brain to deliver the same buzz from saving that you're used to receiving from spending. "If you want to become a better saver, you need to make saving feel great," she adds. Find what motivates you and use that to maintain the savings momentum.

There are five stages to forming a new habit: Pre-contemplation, where you're not really thinking about a change yet; contemplation, when you're aware that a change is needed; preparation, which involves setting the stage; action, which involves introducing the behaviors needed to develop a new habit; and maintenance, when the new behavior becomes normal.

To make your desired money habit stick, you need to have fully worked through those first three stages before moving on to action and maintenance. "If you don't really wake up to the need, think about how to do it well and set your environment up to help you be successful, [then] you aren't really going to make a lasting change," Newcomb says.

"Uncovering your spending personality is the easy part. Altering its underlying habits is more involved."

Picturing your savings success

Newcomb offers one last mindset-shifting tip: Visualization. "Imagine yourself crossing the finish line of your financial goal fully and in detail," she advises. Then, picture the obstacles standing in your way and you clearing them. "Combining the obstacle with the goal helps to connect your success with overcoming it."

You've got to admit - that sounds like a great scene for the next chapter of your financial story.