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

Financial Gluttony

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Gluttony is all around us.  I’m as guilty of it as you likely are.  The most classical example of gluttony is the act of eating much more than you need.  It leads to obesity, which is a rampant problem in this country.  Gluttony is described as the excessive indulgence in food and drink.

But, since this is a personal finance blog, let’s expand that description a bit and talk about financial gluttony. In fact, lets get down right philosophical about it.

The excessive indulgence of money. It may not be an official one of the 7 deadly sins, but it certainly is one of the deadly sins of personal finance.  It’s the rampant consumerism that often runs wild in our society.  Especially around this time of year.  We spend and spend and only stop when our credit runs out.  We give little thought to what the resulting consequences will be of our spending.  Over spending, over extending, gluttonous use of money.

The excessive indulgences of finance.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that many of you have probably not thought of this side of the argument.  What I’m talking about is the gluttonous use of financial maxims to save and perform frugal acts.  Moderation is good for all things, even the stuff that is good for us.  You’ll garner no argument from me that saving money and being frugal are good things.  But, it is possible to take it too far.  Making soup by boiling your old belts, not because you can’t afford food, but because it’ll save a buck or two is finance gluttony.  Ok, that’s a pretty extreme example, but you get the point.

What I really want to get at here is that there are extremes for everything.  If we eat too much we get fat.  If we spend too much we get broke.  If we save too much, we fail to appreciate what our money can do for us.  So, the next time you’re doing your budget or even just balancing your checkbook, take the time to think about that.  Are you being financially gluttonous?

How Much is It Worth to You?

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In every purchase we make, we should ask ourselves how much is it worth to me?  It’s a very simple question, but in many cases, the answer may surprise you.  And it applies to much more than items.

Let’s try a few examples.

I’ve been keeping my eye on LCD HD receiver televisions.  With the big switchover in February and all the fear marketing going on about the loss of signals, my family may need a new television.  We don’t currently subscribe to a cable service, so we get our tv over the airwaves and will need a HD tv or a subscription to cable.  The tv’s that I’ve been looking at are in the $500 range.  Not a huge amount for tv’s nowadays, but quite a bit for my debt averse family.  Each time I look at them, I have to ask myself if having television is worth $500 to me.  We currently don’t have cable and we only receive one channel over the air.  And to be honest, it wouldn’t be a huge loss to us.  Except.  Except that I like to watch Football in the fall.  Except that my wife is addicted to COPS.  Except.  Except.  Except.  With each exception, the TV or cable subscription becomes more and more worth it to me.  I become more willing to spend the money to get the TV or Cable because of them.

Much like cable, there are some services that demand the question too.  In my hometown, there is only one full service gas station.  All the rest are self service.  The full service station charges $0.02/gallon more for their gas.  This is a non-question for me.  I don’t mind filling my tank up.  I only end up filling up about once a month, so it isn’t a big deal if I have to stand and pump gas for a few minutes.  However, with temperatures falling (it’s about 30 here today) I can certainly see why there might be some people who are asking themselves if the extra $0.02 per gallon is worth staying in the warmth of their car while someone else fills the tank.

The more my wife and I budget and track our money, the more often I find myself asking this question.  Is this service or that item worth the extra money?  Is the convenience worth paying more for or am I just being lazy?  More and more, I find that the answer is No.  In many cases, the convenience isn’t worth a little more slavery to debt.  Each penny that I spend on that convenience is another penny that I cannot use to pay down debt.  Maybe my answers will change when we get rid of our debt, but I think by then our lifestyles and attitudes will have changed significantly enough that the answer will often still be no.