I am sure we have all had some bad money experiences in our past. Heck, some might be dealing with it right now. When we manage our money, some do it right and some do it wrong. There are also a few that walk a fine line between the right and wrong way to manage their money. I want to talk about those that are bad at managing their money or good sometimes and bad other times when managing it.
I would say that you have a bad internal money manager.
If you haven’t been paying attention, people know now more than ever that good money management is the key to financial success. There are many people that we might look up to when it comes to money and they didn’t get there without sound money management skills. There is just no way to get around it. If you want to create wealth and retire at a reasonable age, then sound money management is what you need to achieve.
Most of us think we have it all down when handling our money. The problem is that most of us are not really in control of our spending habits. Those habits are in the control of your internal money manager. This manager is also known as emotions. Your emotions are what control your spending habits and guide you down a path of overspending and overindulging.
Getting Control
How do we usually get control of a bad situation? We work hard to change it, right? How do we get rid of a bad money manager? We usually fire them and find a new one. Well, that is a little harder when your emotions are your money manager. You can’t really fire them or, at least, I haven’t found a way to. Since you are stuck with your emotions, you have to find a way to deal with them in a constructive manner.
Before I was in debt, I was spending like there was no tomorrow. I would borrow more money than I had and then just pay back the minimum. It was great when I was in the moment, but now that I look back, I realize that I was an idiot. I had let my internal money manager take the reins of my financial life. Nothing good came from that experience.
I let my emotions take free rein on how I was dealing with my money. Most people that do this find themselves in the same scenario as myself. You end up in a large amount of debt with nothing to show for it.
Make A Change
I will always have emotions, but how I handle them is much different than before I was in debt. When paying down my debt, I realized that I was the one that needed to take control. I couldn’t let my emotions win the battle. I had to be the bigger man.
In order to achieve this, I found that I needed to figure out a new way to handle money. I needed to change my habits into saving and not spending. I needed to learn how to step back from a purchase decision and let research give me the answer. I learned that if I use the tools properly, then I could let my money work for me.
Your Emotions Are Under Your Control
Your emotions are what get you do make bad money decisions. We have all been there. Your emotions are also what get you to have buyer’s remorse. We might know we made a horrible purchase decision, but our emotions feel much better after we did. That usually comes to an end pretty quickly. The one thing that I learned when getting out of debt is that we all need to take back control. We need to be the grown up and we need to be the ones that manage our money. If we let our emotions take the reins, then we will never get ahead. Emotions spending is bad and it will never get better unless you find a way to take back control and put your emotions in their place.
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