You ignore your spending habits at your peril.
The process of analyzing your spending is simple.
So simple perhaps it’s the reason you ignore it.
How can anything that is so easy actually work
in a world where complexity gets celebrity status?
Spending On Purpose is that approach.
It is a way to help you manage the risks inherent in spending
your income as you attempt to make your dreams come true.
The flip side of this, and the focus of the “purpose” part,
is controlling where you can, and stopping where you must,
spending habits and patterns that fail to make good.
Now, to be fair, you may have tried some budgeting.
Your experience may have been unsatisfactory. No big deal.
The method you used, not you personally, may be the problem.
Maybe it’s time to change the method. The old one is flawed.
Give up on the traditional budget format. You know the one.
You divide up all your expenses under Shelter and Utilities,
Food, Transportation, Insurance and Savings, Personal and Health Care,
and then throw all the rest into Other/Discretionary.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work for 50% of the population.
It doesn’t work because there is no immediate link to your motivations…
no driving force that has a powerful emotional stimulus.
And you need one to change behavior.
So get started examining what you value most, what you get for your spending,
And how that measures up to your expectations for the lifestyle you really want.
The steps to change start at the motivational level.
Create some new budget categories that reflect how you feel and think.
And then scrap all the ones that are rational…
and join the rest of us who spend from the heart not the head.
But that’s no excuse for not examining what you get for what you spend.
Copyright 2010 William M. MacKay
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