Ugh. I’ve been avoiding looking at my credit card bills. Every week, I send money to my credit card accounts in excess of the minimum payment, but every week I also seem to spend a little more than the amount I paid plus the interest on the remaining balance. Of course, I wasn’t utterly ignorant of the total balance, but I chose not to look at it because I knew it was bad news and I really didn’t feel like trying to come up with a solution. Yup, I was evading my credit cards.
Last January, February, and March were not pleasant times for me as I struggled to pay off my credit cards. I was successful at it, but I did it in a way that just was not sustainable. Flash forward to this January, February, March in which I’ve managed to drive my credit card balance up to more than TWICE the total it was a year ago when I went on my push to pay them off.
When I think about the sum of money that I’ve paid toward credit cards in the last 12 months, I am absolutely gob-smacked.
Had I practiced a bit more restraint, nay, rationality with regard to my finances, the question of doing fun things like going on vacation, vacations like OCON, would not be a challenge at all.
I think the problem is that I really haven’t integrated “money” into my life properly.
I grew up with very little money. I don’t want to get into details about it because I think my mother would probably not appreciate that being out on the internets for the world to see. Just suffice it to say that we didn’t have a lot of money in our household. My mother was a financial wizard with what we had, though, and she made it work.
My father is an absolute nutcase about money. In his mind, houses should not cost more than $50,000 and you should pay for them in cash all at once. It’s like he got his ideas about the price of things from 1948, which is before he was even born, and just stopped checking in on things. While I agree that prices would be lower if we’d maintained the gold standard, we didn’t do that and prices have risen with the amount of fiat money on the market. This is just the context we live in.
Somehow, amid all of that crazy, I somehow got the idea that there are really only two approaches to one’s finances: spend like there is no tomorrow or scrimp and save like you hate life itself. And the lesson I’m only just now waking up to is the fact that both of these approaches lead to misery and death. And that is not fun at all.
So, although I have a zillion dollars in credit card debt again, I am going to attempt a much more reasoned approach to my money. First, I’m putting myself on a tight monthly budget. That will allow me to increase my credit card payments each week. (I pay my credit cards weekly because my credit card companies shifted the payment cycles around so that if I pay monthly, there are periods when my monthly payment is late.)
When something comes up that I want very badly, I will weigh it carefully and, if it still seems like a very good thing, then I’ll buy it. For the time being, that means buying with my credit cards, but eventually, it will mean buying things with cash.
The idea here is that I need to develop a stronger sense of my financial self, my position, my budget. And I need to work within the bounds of that context in order to achieve happiness in my life. I wouldn’t behave as if I can block bullets and stop trains with my bare hands, would I? So, why behave with my money as if I’m a cuter version of Donald Trump?
So, anyway, I’m doing that. It’s boring and unfun to talk about, but them’s the breaks. Onward and upward!
Your standard method of dealing with money (until now) sounds a lot like Oprah’s method of dealing with her weight: lose quickly by unbearable deprivation, then when the goal is achieved, binge binge binge. That leaves you worse off — physically and spiritually — than never going on the diet.
Maybe your finances need a paleo diet? Do value-dense buying and avoid the junk?
Anywhoodles, the solution isn’t “moderation,” but pursuing your financial goals while keeping the context of your other goals and values. That sounds like what you’re doing, so I hope that works well for you.
I think it will.
One of the next things I will need to do — and soon — is figure out the method of choosing for that “value-dense buying.” I very much agree on that view of moderation, too. I’m not sure what “moderation” would look like if it didn’t mean privation. And that’s not what I want.
I want to find a method for living in proper context with my money and enjoying it to the fullest in a financially healthy way.