The Anatomy of a Self-Destructive Attitude Towards Money

For the most part, debt isn’t something that just happens by mistake. There’s something you did or didn’t do that brought on the debt. If you want to get out of debt and stay out, you have to take a look at what caused you to get into debt in the first place.

By taking a retrospective look at your spending habits, you can pinpoint the actions that led you down the debt path. When you’ve realized how you got into debt, you can begin changing those habits to:

1. make sure you don’t incur additional debt while paying your debt down and
2. avoid becoming laden with debt even after you’ve paid off all your current debt

Let’s look at a few habits that indicate a self-destructive attitude towards money.

You pay little or no attention to your finances

There are certain things you have to do to a vehicle to keep it running smoothly. You have to put fuel in it. You have to change the motor oil. You have to rotate and balance the tires. So, if you want your car to continue to run, you’ll make sure regular maintenance is complete.

The same thing is true for your finances. You should have and live by a household budget, regularly balance your checkbook, and check your credit report and credit score. Ignoring these financial maintenance tasks is like refusing to change the motor oil in your car. Your finances will continue to run for awhile, but eventually there will be some expensive damage.

You don’t put money into a savings account

Spending all your money without contributing to a savings account puts you in a vulnerable position. What will you do if an emergency arises? The only thing you can do in that situation is use a credit card or a loan to pay for the emergency. Then you add another debt payment to your other financial obligations and your paycheck gets stretched even further.

Think about how much easier (and cheaper) it would be if you had some money in a savings account when the emergency came up. You could avoid an expensive loan or credit card balance. Your budget could relax. You wouldn’t have to struggle to make ends meet.

There will be rainy days. If you don’t have an umbrella (money in a savings account), you will get wet.

You don’t care about paying off your credit cards quickly

There are two very good reasons for paying off your credit card bills. First, you save on interest charges. Second, you free up that cash to do other things with.

Some people don’t see either of those reasons as being important enough to get rid of their debt. So they end up carrying credit card balances for years, sometimes paying double the original purchase amount in interest charges.

You should care more about your money than to simply give it to credit card companies who, by the way, already have billions of dollars in their pockets. How much is in your pocket?

Change the way you think about money

You may be getting by with being careless with money. You may even get by for a little while longer. But, at some point self-destructive money habits will catch up with you in the form of too much debt. If you can avoid that state, by all means do it.
I heard somewhere that it takes 21 days to make a new habit. That means you can think differently about money in less than a month.

First, realize the importance of keeping up with your finances. You work for your money. Shouldn’t you be concerned about where it’s going?

Next, start putting some money aside for a rainy day. Then, when you’ve built up a sizeable emergency fund, focus on paying off your debt, and then on building wealth.

Finally, get rid of expensive credit card debt. Paying interest to credit card companies is counter-productive. The goal is to gain financial independence. You’ll never have that if you always owe money to someone else.