Have you ever tried to plan in doing a lot of things before but it seems like you have this struggle with laziness? Haha. I was one of those people before. I am still a work in progress till now especially when I am so distracted and never focus on my goals.
Breaking up with a bad habit especially in finances is like breaking up to a bad girlfriend that consumes your time, effort, energy and money. Sooner or later you will realize that it is totally worth it.
There are habits in our life that we need to admit and we need to let go so we can experience growth. We need to graduate from the following habits.
1. You got tons of excuses why you don't have savings or investment account.
"Time is gold" whoever said those words knew exactly the value of it. In this lifetime you will earn millions but you have limited time. Get serious with your finances and start now in changing your habits and behavior. Excuses will make you weak. Pride will bring you down.
2. You have so many extra curricular activities and you put the savings and investment as the last of your priorities.
Our ability to discriminate things from the highly important goals will give us an advantage from other people. There's no problem in going for a long vacation, buying a new car, getting a new gadget or treating your friends to a bar. But remember to manage your finances first or else activities will manage your finances? What would you choose?
3. You made a promise at the start of the year that you will start investing but till now you never even started choosing what kind of investment you will enter.
How many years you've been planning for this to start? Stop thinking about it! Like what the company NIKE said "Just do it". Do your due diligence. Research, ask, save, invest and do it again and again till you get used to it. Momentum will overflow. Many successful people are known because of what they did not because on what they know.
4. You just plan to have your budget then fail to apply it.
Putting it in a paper is like the the first step but it will take series of action before you achieve your goals. Putting it in paper will not make you win. Finishing it thru compounding action will make a difference.
5. You planned to pay for all the debts that you have but fail to pay even the minimum of your credit card that you owe.
Let us admit, there is a global pandemic about debt mismanagement. If there's a medicine for procrastination in paying debt i think many will subscribe or have a lifetime maintenance with it just to simply cure that part. Commitment is something that needs to be enhance. Your ability to discipline yourself and pay for your debt and save money will free you from financial procrastination
6. You are still wondering how come your money don't last till the next pay day.
Yes it happened again? You failed to do your assignment. Have some written vision and goals. Do the budget. Write it down or put it in an app so you can monitor your progress. Seeing whether your growing or not will give you an idea where to make necessary adjustments.
7. You keep on buying in E-commerce thinking that you will earn because of the discount that you are getting.
What you have is a Wrong mindset! The site design was to simply earn from people with the kind of mentality that you have.
Buying in an e-commerce site will not give you savings but will encourage you to get more items and pay more resulting to a rewarding program into your brain called buying endorphins while your pocket or bank account is having a lot of pain.
Forming those habits is not an overnight process and changing it will take time too. You might be in a season of pruning right now where you need to unlearn a lot of crazy beliefs inside your head. You should graduate from that procrastination by simply doing baby steps after baby steps.
Pro 22:3 A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
David Isaiah Angway is a Financial Evangelist
