Screwing up

Fact: You are going to screw up sometimes. Maybe you miscalculate a bill and overdraw your account. Perhaps you succumb to temptation and use a credit card instead of cash/debit. Or you forgot to plan for an upcoming [and necessary] expense.

Last week, it was my turn. First, I didn’t realize my rent check hadn’t been cashed when I was calculating if I could pay off two credit cards. Even though I transferred money from my savings account, since it was from a different bank, it didn’t arrive in time for prevent my account from being overdrawn. Second, it was a horrendous week. I won’t bore you with all the details. I’ve always had trouble dealing with things when life gets hard, and last week was no exception.

Instead of finding a healthy and financially-savvy way of dealing with it, I chose to pull out a credit card and just spend…spend…spend. I ate dinner out, got a haircut, and then did some serious shopping at Walmart. While it did cheer me up in the moment, I now feel guilty about giving in to the temptation to spend as a fix for my bad mood.

Of course, I do regret my impulsive spending spree. But I also recognize that there are going to be times when this happens. As I tell my students often, nobody is perfect. Mistakes are going to happen, you’re going to blow your budget, etc. The important thing to remember is that you need to get back on track.

Although I wasn’t perfect this week either, I did make better choices than last week. And this episode helped me to realize something – I do much better at staying on track with my budget when I have little treats to look forward to in the near future. I’ve always been a fan of anticipating something special and I feel that the anticipation is half the fun. Going forward, I plan to build such things into my budget/life to hopefully help me handle the difficult weeks better.

How do you recover from a budgeting setback?

The Intelligent Zebra