For this journey I decided to read Dave Ramsey’s newest edition of The Total Money Makeover that was just released. The first couple of chapters talk a lot about controlling the person in the mirror. If you aren’t willing to change then this book is not going to work. This was my problem the first time, I didn’t think there was a problem and besides finding ourselves in a bad situation there was nothing we did wrong that we needed to change or so we thought.
This time is different, I know I need to change, but most importantly I want to change.
I have been very intentional this week about not spending money and let me tell you, it is hard. The devil knows that I have a plan and he is doing everything he can to tempt me into breaking it like all the times before. There are some websites that I get ads for on occasion, and I really love shopping. Well, the devil knows I don’t want to spend money so this week I have seen the most amazing deals. Like $1.99 for t-shirts that have cute bible verses and Christian messages, you know how hard that is to pass up? I tried to convince myself that the thrift store is not even that cheap. What I had to remind myself is that this is a habit for me that I am trying to break. Plus, I have way more t-shirts than what I can even wear so, why do I need more? I don’t, it’s definitely an I want, and an I want to shop.
Changing habits and learning to tell yourself “No” is so hard. Like any addiction recovery process, I just need to take it one day at a time. No matter how cute or how cheap or how much I think I need something, out of control spending has to end.
The word “No” is not used in our society very often anymore. Most kids don’t hear it and that creates adults who don’t know how to live on less than they make. We are like children inside realizing that as adults we can now get whatever we want. Our economy makes it really easy for us to buy what we want, when we want, on credit. Society feeds our inner child’s desires. Dave’s book, The Total Money Makeover in chapter 3 says, “Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.” This is so true and something that I am learning.
It takes a lot of work to quit using credit cards. Especially when you have them linked to online stores and auto pays. Even if you are paying them off each month, you are paying for last month’s expenses, so to switch over to cash you have to be able to pay your credit cards and your current month expenses in one month. We had to just start paying for current expenses and let the credit cards carry a higher starting balance into our debt snowball. It’s not ideal but debt in the first place is not ideal either.
I was excited that we’ve been doing so well this week getting started and then we had a piece break on our fish tank filter. I went straight to Amazon to get the replacement part in 2 days and hit buy without thinking about it. After it was done, I realized that our American Express card was still linked to our Amazon account. Time to fix that. At least it was only $20 so it wasn’t a big setback, but it did remind me that this is a journey and as long as we keep striving toward our goal that is what is important.