U: Understand You’re Only Human
May 25th, 2006 | by Molly's Brother |I love that little green notebook, the center of my financial life! The beginning of order and clarity and understanding. The end of unlimited, unintentional spending. I achieve Zen when I log an entry. With that fine, pointed tip poking out from my mechanical pencil, I write clearly and delicately, journaling my financial life. If you picked up my notebook, you would flip through page after page of carefully written single lined entries: “DEPOSIT–INGDIRECT,” “RENT,” “DINNER WITH FRIENDS,” “GROCERIES.” In every other avenue of life, I write in flowery, powerful–beautiful, if I do say so–cursive. In my little green notebook, I print in all caps. Simple. Clear. Unmistakable.
But, you see, I haven’t been writing in my spiral bound conscience lately. Things have gotten busy at work, life has ballooned into crisis and chaos and drama. (None of it mine, thankfully. Some of my friends, though, are swimming through the Choppy Waters of Life.) At the end of the day, I have forgotten to pull out my spending journal and document the DINNERS and COFFEES and BILLS that I paid for earlier in the day. And, Lord knows, I wasn’t tracking the expenses at the point of purchase, either. And then that little buddy of mine fell farther and farther in my canvas bag, causing me to first ignore and then forget about him entirely.
Until my Y.O.U.R. Approach post, that is. As I was typing out “U: Understand You’re Only Human,” bells were going off in my head. I realized that we all experience moments of distraction. And that’s exactly what happened. Had this moment of distraction continued I would have–ultimately–dropped off the wagon and the habit would have died. And I wonder if my spending would have been effected. It might have. But I didn’t beat myself up. I didn’t wallow about my momentary derailment. I just got back in the practice of logging all financial transactions.
I started keeping track of my expenses to help me construct a monthly budget. But now that I have created that budget, I rely on the notebook as an effective tool to measure if my purchases and acts of spending are intentional or if they are compulsive. It keeps me honest.
