Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Financial Intentionality

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Financial bloggers, myself included, speak rather frequently about setting goals for your financial life.  Goals are super important.  If you don’t have a goal, you have no direction.  Further, if you don’t have a goal, you have not intention for your money.  You are intention-less.

What is your intention for your money?  What purpose should your money serve?
Pay-offA typical goal for money is to pay off this or that.  To save for this date, or this item.  But, deep down, there is an intention there.  If your goal is to pay off a debt, the intention is for your money to make you debt free.  If you’re saving up for something, the intention is to buy what you want without adding debt.  If you’re saving up for a date, the intention is to reach that date with some amount of money to pay for things without adding debt, or having to live in a trailer.

Financial Intentionality, in my mind, is more important than financial goals.  If the intention is all wrong, it just won’t help you out.  I don’t think that it’s black and white.  Call it karma, or morality, or whatever, but having a good intention will always get you farther than a bad one.  Not only that, but I think that intentionally guiding your money is a better way.

My intention with my money is to facilitate a debt free lifestyle where I can enjoy what I do, and not have to worry about where the next payment is going to come from.  There are sub-intentions.  Or, rather, intentions that lead towards that grander intention.  I intend to use my money to pay off my debt.  I intend to use my money to provide for my family in a way that allows us our necessities and a few luxuries without causing us to go further into debt or life extravagantly.

What are your intentions with your money?  Are the goals that you’ve set in line with those intentions?

Study what you do with your money.  Are your spending habits in line with your intentions?  How about your goals?  Perhaps your intention is to become debt free, but, one of your short-term goals is to save up for a new HDTV.  If you don’t really need that TV, your goal is way out of line with your intention.

Spend your money with intention.  Keep your intentions in mind as you set your goals and spend your money.

photo credit: Truthout.org

The Value of Accountablility

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We can all talk about doing the right thing with our finances all day long.  We can talk about making a budget, spending according to that budget, and living a frugal financial lifestyle.  But, none of that makes any difference if we don’t walk that walk.

Sometimes, we can’t do that on our own.  Sometimes it takes a wife, parent, sibling, or a friend to hold us accountable for our actions and for our progress towards our goals.  Accountability has an incredible value to you.  Some will quickly scoff and attribute a negative value to it, but it really isn’t a negative thing.  And many who would scoff at it are merely afraid to accept any accountability for fear that they will be found failing.

The value of accountability is in it’s ability to push you towards your goals.  If you set goals but there is no one who knows them and can hold you accountable, then there is no one (aside from yourself) who knows if you’ve failed.  That’s safe for you, as failure isn’t usually something that we want publicized.  But, it’s also bad for you.  It makes it easier to fail.  It makes it easier to simply move on from a failure and not learn from it.

Accountability won’t make you succeed.  You’ll still need to do the footwork towards meeting your goals.  What accountability does is give you that extra support from those that are holding you accountable towards making your goals.  Don’t think of it as someone waiting for you to fail, or someone who is just waiting to rub in a misstep.  Instead, think of those who hold you accountable as people who want you to succeed.

You should want to be held accountable.  Search out those around you who truly want you to be healthy, and want you to succeed.  Let them in on your goals and the steps that you are taking to making your goals happen.  They’ll gladly help you and act as a positive force for your goals.  Don’t be afraid of being accountable.  Embrace it.