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Dollars and Sense
by Lynn Evans (Write for us!)
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Yeah, I know. Tackling your financial mess this soon after the holidays is
as delightful as anticipating your annual flu shot: you know you should have one but you'd rather not right now, thank you.
So let's deal with your excessive spending and the guilt, which is bound to follow.
You are not a bad person. But you may be a typical over-spending American. There, now that that confession is out of the way, let's figure out a way to deal with it.
I'm going to take a position that very few financial folks consider: You're not thinking big enough. I'm not talking about more debt or a bigger house or anything financially "bigger". I'm talking about goals.
Consider this. If saving money, as opposed to spending it recklessly, is driven by a screaming nag in your brain's morality center, then it will never work. Never.
If you can't create something more exciting and compelling than saving for the sake of saving (or God forbid, for a rainy day), then other more tempting diversions will argue strenuously for spending your cash now. So how do you create something more compelling?
I would offer this. If you were told that you had a very short time to live and knew that money was no object, what would you do differently with your life? To those who may be reading this and that scenario is a little too close to home, I apologize for what may seem my irreverence. It is intended to be a wake-up call.
If your life seems very routine and prescribed, then consider what would make you want look to a future very different from the one you are destined to have. Like what you would do with your time when you retire. Or where you would live. Or what courses you would take in college. Or to where you would travel. And with whom would you do these things.
If you can visualize a life very rich with people you want to be around, places you want to visit, a house or two where you've always wanted to live, and a full schedule of challenging, spiritual, and gratifying activities, then maybe you'll want to save some money to accomplish those things. If the picture looks as mundane or average as the life you may be living now, then no one in his or her right mind would want to save anything to perpetuate that!
If we take a page from the book by George Kinder, whose Institute for Life Planning, in California (where else?!), espouses developing a "life that is complete, that is richly yours", then we should start planning for, and even living a part of, that life now. If you can imagine that to be so, then saving becomes so much easier and far more purposeful, and may even give you the incentive to forego spending that extra $300 on a new barbecue grill when your old one would do.
How would you discover what that life would look like? Going back to the question I asked earlier (if you had one year to live...), here are a few questions to get you started.
Whatever your answers were to those questions, start now in formulating concrete plans to make them happen. Your first and normal reaction to this quest is most likely reviewing all the reasons why you can't. That's normal, and not to be dismissed out of hand. It's the normal human resistance to change that is clogging up the wires in your brain. What the heart wants, the head is trying to reason away. It's foolish, it will never happen, my spouse will never agree, there is no money to do this and there never will be, etc, etc, etc. But many times, it's putting it down on paper and looking for solutions that makes the brain's interference go away.
Like identifying exactly what it is that stops you from having the life you really want. When you feel that resistance, ask yourself these questions to get at the heart of it:
So let's deal with your excessive spending and the guilt, which is bound to follow.
You are not a bad person. But you may be a typical over-spending American. There, now that that confession is out of the way, let's figure out a way to deal with it.
I'm going to take a position that very few financial folks consider: You're not thinking big enough. I'm not talking about more debt or a bigger house or anything financially "bigger". I'm talking about goals.
Consider this. If saving money, as opposed to spending it recklessly, is driven by a screaming nag in your brain's morality center, then it will never work. Never.
If you can't create something more exciting and compelling than saving for the sake of saving (or God forbid, for a rainy day), then other more tempting diversions will argue strenuously for spending your cash now. So how do you create something more compelling?
I would offer this. If you were told that you had a very short time to live and knew that money was no object, what would you do differently with your life? To those who may be reading this and that scenario is a little too close to home, I apologize for what may seem my irreverence. It is intended to be a wake-up call.
If your life seems very routine and prescribed, then consider what would make you want look to a future very different from the one you are destined to have. Like what you would do with your time when you retire. Or where you would live. Or what courses you would take in college. Or to where you would travel. And with whom would you do these things.
If you can visualize a life very rich with people you want to be around, places you want to visit, a house or two where you've always wanted to live, and a full schedule of challenging, spiritual, and gratifying activities, then maybe you'll want to save some money to accomplish those things. If the picture looks as mundane or average as the life you may be living now, then no one in his or her right mind would want to save anything to perpetuate that!
If we take a page from the book by George Kinder, whose Institute for Life Planning, in California (where else?!), espouses developing a "life that is complete, that is richly yours", then we should start planning for, and even living a part of, that life now. If you can imagine that to be so, then saving becomes so much easier and far more purposeful, and may even give you the incentive to forego spending that extra $300 on a new barbecue grill when your old one would do.
How would you discover what that life would look like? Going back to the question I asked earlier (if you had one year to live...), here are a few questions to get you started.
- What dreams would be left unfulfilled?
- What do I wish I had finished or had been?
- What do I wish I had done?
- What did I miss?
Whatever your answers were to those questions, start now in formulating concrete plans to make them happen. Your first and normal reaction to this quest is most likely reviewing all the reasons why you can't. That's normal, and not to be dismissed out of hand. It's the normal human resistance to change that is clogging up the wires in your brain. What the heart wants, the head is trying to reason away. It's foolish, it will never happen, my spouse will never agree, there is no money to do this and there never will be, etc, etc, etc. But many times, it's putting it down on paper and looking for solutions that makes the brain's interference go away.
Like identifying exactly what it is that stops you from having the life you really want. When you feel that resistance, ask yourself these questions to get at the heart of it:
- What's standing between me and what I want?
- What's my plan for overcoming each of these obstacles?
- What do I have, in terms of personal strengths and outside resources, which will help me deal with these obstacles?
- What skills and knowledge do I need to add to accomplish this change?
- Are there other people I can call on for help in overcoming these obstacles?
- What's my time line for overcoming these obstacles?
- How can I make these changes happen sooner?
- Do I need my family's support for making this change?
- If so, how can I rally that support?
- How can I evaluate and monitor my progress toward my goals?
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