Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

What Will You Do with the Final Days of 2021?

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What Will You Do with the Final Days of 2021?

I’m on several personal finance and healthy eating groups on Facebook. Routinely, right about now, newbies to the groups post about their big plans in January. In January they’re going to start paying down their debt, saving more, eating healthier. They jump right to January even though, as of today, there are 39 days left in 2021. That is 5.5 weeks left. Don’t throw in the towel on your goals just because we’re approaching the holiday season! You can still make a positive impact on your life in the next 5.5 weeks!

How We Self-Sabotage at the End of the Year

Let’s be honest. Many of us can do some significant damage to our lives in the last few weeks of any year. We tend to lose control and let loose. Then, we have to pick up the pieces in the next year. I used to exhibit that kind of behavior every year!

For instance, one year, my husband and I overspent on Christmas gifts. Our budget was extremely tight, and we needed three months of the new year to get out of the hole we had dug! Three months for one night of Christmas Eve shopping.

What Will You Do with the Rest of 2021?
Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

I used to do the same with my food consumption. Starting at Thanksgiving, I would give up and eat all of the good things with abandon. One year, I gained 10 pounds from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. I was gaining at a rate of two pounds a week for five weeks. That’s ridiculous!

What Will You Do with the Final Days of 2021?

Luckily, I’ve gotten older and wiser. True, we are entering the holiday season, which can make reining in our budgets and our food consumption a bit more difficult. However, Thanksgiving is only one day as is Christmas. We’re talking two days in the remaining 39 days of the year.

You still have time to make this year different.

Mind Your Budget

Imagine that, for the next five weeks, you stick to your budget. You don’t overspend. Then, when you start 2022, you’re starting with a clean slate. You’re not in the hole from overspending. How great would that feel?

Enjoy on the Holidays

Likewise, feel free to celebrate on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Enjoy the drinks, the food, the company. But just enjoy the food and drinks on that day. If you love pumpkin pie, eat a slice (or two) on Thanksgiving, but then eat normally the rest of the days. Your body can handle one day of indulgence. It can’t handle 39 days of indulgence!

Final Thoughts

Far too many of us self-sabotage as we enter the holiday season. We worry that we’ll miss out. We think that we don’t have any self-control during the holidays. But that’s not true. Instead, we need a mind shift. Indulge on the actual holiday, but the rest of the days, live your normal, typical life. You’ll be so much happier on January 1st if you do.

Read More

9 Ways to Get Your Child a Christmas Gift If You Can’t Afford One

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What Christmas Expectations Are You Setting for Your Children?

What’s Your Financial Weakness?

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We all have a financial weakness.  That one area where we struggle to do the right thing.  We might even struggle with deciding what the right thing is.  If we remain unaware of our financial weakness, it can wreak havoc throughout our financial life, as my weakness did mine.

However, knowing your financial weakness, your financial Achilles’ Heel, so to speak, can help you become a better manager of your finances.

My Financial Achilles’ Heel

Me?  I like to squirrel things away for the proverbial rainy day, but when the rainy day comes, I don’t like to dip into my stash.

My husband and I have an emergency fund.  True, it’s smaller than we’d like, but we do have one in place.  Considering 28% of Americans don’t have any emergency fund (CNN Money), we’re glad to have our small one.

Financial WeaknessThere are other ways I squirrel away things.  We buy produce in season at lower cost by doing creative things like renting an apple tree.   Then we store it away for the cold winter months.  (It makes me feel a bit like a pioneer.  A pampered pioneer, but a pioneer, nonetheless.)  Right now we have a deep freezer in our basement that is filled with plums, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, and applesauce.  If we didn’t have money for groceries, we have enough fruit to easily last us for two to three months.

Having an emergency fund as well as a stocked pantry doesn’t sound like a problem, right?

Right.  I’m being financially responsible and preparing for a time when money will be tight.

Here’s the problem.

I don’t like to dig into my stash.

If I have a financially lean month and I’m faced with a large expense like a car repair, I don’t do what would be logical–dip into my emergency fund.  Instead, my first inclination is to put the repair on my credit card and leave the emergency fund intact.

If I have a month where I don’t have as much grocery money, I’m more likely to put groceries on my credit card than make a significant dent in our food stash.

My behavior makes.no.sense.  No sense.

And yet it took me years to figure out that I do this and to realize that I have to fight the natural inclination to go in debt rather than dip into my reserves.  Part of why my family struggled with credit card debt is because of this irrational behavior.  Now the credit card debt is paid off, and I have a chance to start anew, well aware of my weakness.

What’s Your Financial Weakness

So, what’s your financial weakness?  What completely irrational behavior do you exhibit?  Are you even aware of what it may be?

Honestly, finding the chink in your armor, so to speak, may take years.  I think it took me nearly 15 years to figure out mine, and I made a lot of financial mistakes during that time.  I’m not sure why I exhibit this behavior except that perhaps growing up, I always saw my parents struggle with money.  They never had money to create an emergency fund.  Credit cards were their emergency fund, and they had to use them frequently.

I’m guessing for most of us, the experience is the same.  Financial behaviors we saw in childhood and learned as normal become the basis for some of our adult decision making.

What is your financial Achilles’ Heel?

Do You Compare Your Finances to Others?

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I belong to several Facebook groups, and recently, a woman in one group asked the seemingly innocent question, “What do you pay for cell phones and car insurance?”  She added, “We pay $180 a month for our cell phones and $345 a month for our car insurance.”

Say what?

When you read that number, you automatically think one of two things–“Wow, she’s paying a fortune for cell phones and car insurance!” (that was my initial thought), or, you think, “Sounds about right.”

Comparing FinancesA few of you may even think she’s getting a good deal.

My husband and I each carry a cheap cell phone from Tracfone that is for emergencies or occasionally checking in with one another.  We don’t spend any more than $10 to $20 a month on them.  Our car insurance is about $55 per month.  (We only have one vehicle.)

After reading how much this woman spent, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  But why?  I really don’t know her situation.  Her cell phone plan might include cell phones for the whole family.  Her car insurance is likely for multiple cars.  Maybe she has teenage drivers, or maybe she or her spouse has gotten a ticket recently.

Besides, I have no idea how much money she makes.  These bills might not be that extravagant in relationship to her income.

There’s really no point comparing my situation to hers.  To do so would invite complacency toward my own budget at best, and a loosening of the purse strings at worst because, hey, other people are spending a lot more than me.

The Only Time You Should Compare Your Spending to Others

Generally, I try not to compare my spending or budget to others.  Circumstances vary widely, and knowing another person’s exact financial situation is difficult.  Too often, especially online, we get a snapshot of someone’s finances and think we see the whole picture when we don’t.

We make assumptions of our own financial situations based on others.

Ultimately, we need to strive to do the best we can do with our own budgets.  To beat ourselves by spending less and/or saving more than we did the month before or the year before.

The only time it makes sense to look at someone else’s finances and spending is when they are doing considerably better than you, and you want to learn from and emulate them.  For instance, I knew my husband and I were spending too much for groceries.  One blogger I read has grown a large garden and planted fruit trees so that she can feed her family of 9 for less than $300 per month.  (Yes, you read that right.)

I know I won’t  ever have a grocery budget of $300 per month, but reading her techniques and strategies has encouraged me to cut my grocery budget and try to spend less.  It’s even inspired me to try out once a month shopping to reduce costs.

Ultimately, we shouldn’t compare our finances to others, but if we’re going to, we should only compare to those we wish to emulate.

Do you look at other people’s spending to make you feel better about your own or to motivate you to improve your finances?