Mindful readers might immediately ask: "Why is there "conscious" in the title? Can financial behaviour be unconscious?" Oh, yes! And, unfortunately, most of the time it is!

When was the last time you made a financial decision? Not when you bought something for lunch or checked out in the grocery store, but a hard, well-thought, conscious decision to spend some money? I bet you will be hard-pressed to point to today, maybe even last week.

Will this book focus only on deliberate, weighted, important financial decisions? No, not at all! We will mostly talk about everyday life, small things with big implications. But the first argument I make here is this: most of the time, we humans demonstrate not-that-conscious behaviour, even when spending our well-earned money.

Most of the time, we execute just simple habits; sometimes, we use randomly formed heuristics; and, even rarer, make deliberate financial decisions – one might want to pull the 80/20 rule here, but I'm even more sceptical about financial mindfulness of most of the people – 98/2 seems like much more accurate ratio to me.

All that said, it's not the reason to not try to change your behaviour. But it's also not a reason to try making all our financial actions fully mindful – far from it! My goal here is to demonstrate how often we execute unconscious financial behaviour and then help make it more effective. Not mindful, but deliberate. And, of course, make those 2 percent left to conscious behaviour – the most impactful, most well thought, defining the previous 98%.

What do we need to know to change both conscious and unconscious behaviour? We need to understand what defines it and how it's being regulated. That's why we will start with everything you need to know about your own brain. After that, we will talk about habits. Then we will learn to form our own heuristics. And we will finish by constructing deliberate rituals to help make mindful financial decisions. That will conclude the first part of this book.

In the second part, we will apply that knowledge to the practice of changing three types of financial behaviour, including that part in which we formulate our own financial goals. Contrary to the widespread belief, I will try to demonstrate to you that "goal setting" is a bit overrated, and instead, you should think about "optimisation parameters".

After that, we will go through several principles that will help you to organise both your budget and structure your daily financial life to live according to the parameters you've set.

And lastly, I will remind you what you can use to actually pull this whole "changed person" behaviour in the long run.

To help you with all that, there will be exactly one smallish Excel table (OK, there might be a couple of tabs in it, but they also will be very small – I promise!). There will also be a checklist with only 24 points (you will check them all in no time, 100%). I don't suppose you will actually use the list of mental models, which also will wait for you at the end of this book, at least right away – but if at some point you find yourself wondering, "What was the formula for any behaviour?" – it will be waiting for you there. Lastly, I'll try to collect a bunch of useful links and reading materials, but – I understand – no one is reading a book to find out that they should read another book, right? Either way, check it out; you might also find something useful there.

And… that's it. This book will change your life. It will certainly change your financial behaviour, but if you can change that, the sky is the limit, and you'll be well equipped to change almost anything else! ;)