Using Forced Savings to Prevent Self-Rationalisation

One of the arguments for getting a mortgage on a property is that it provides forced savings. The mortgage forces you to pay monthly.

Many financial experts recommend "pay yourself first" where money is automatically invested, which reduces the temptation to spend.

It seems we humans have a tendency to rationalise reasons to spend e.g. many say that you should only spend on experiences rather than "stuff" and others say that you should spend on things you actually use which seems like a nicer way to say you should buy stuff rather than experiences. Or people will focus on saving $3 per day on the daily cup of coffee but then ignore large expenses such as buying a luxury car.

Basically it is very easy for the human mind to justify spending a lot, and so some degree of forced savings seems necessary, and also a quantitative focus on savings rather than qualitative one is more important as well to prevent self-rationalisation. If you have a quantitative goal like save 70% of your gross income and then implement it using forced savings then this is much more effective than some qualitative rule such as "spend on necessities rather then wants" or "spend on experiences rather than stuff" or "buy expensive stuff that lasts long rather than cheap stuff than doesn't last long" and so forth.