Ten signs of not being in control of your finances.
- Being confused or unclear about your financial situation. Not knowing account balances, loan interest rates, expenses and outgoings.
- Experiencing different feelings when purchasing items on credit than when paying cash, a feeling of being grown up, of having arrived, of being in the club.
- Recklessly borrowing money, giving little thought to being able to repay the loan.
- Constant difficulty in meeting personal or financial obligations and/or an inordinate sense of accomplishment when such obligations are met.
- Poor saving habits. Not planning for bills you know are going to arrive.
- A live for today attitude, believing that something will turn up to save the situation. This is known as ‘Santa Claus’ thinking. Santa Claus is for small children!
- Denying basic needs and depriving yourself in order to pay off creditors.
- Always having a financial crisis to contend with.
- Taking jobs below your skill level and working extra hours to pay off creditors.
- Living constantly with a sense of financial crisis.
If debt is a pattern in your life, causing you frustration and even despair, the good news is that there are simple steps and actions you can take to regain control of your finances.
To speak of debt in this instance is to differentiate between secured and unsecured debt and the steps outlined are actions, to alleviate the suffering caused by a pattern of spending that create dependency on unsecured debt. Debt that is not backed up by an asset such as a house or car.
The continual use of unsecured credit can destroy your self esteem, hurt families, and leads inevitably to a host of other problems, though it is often difficult to see the connection between out of control debt and other issues.
Sleepless nights, fear of the postman, the stress of constant phone calls and letters from creditors all contribute to a loss of peace of mind and the cause of constant worry.
Out of control debting causes loss of self-esteem, loss of income which is eaten up through debt and reckless spending, and often loss of friends and family breakdown.
Lonliness and shame cause you to withdraw more and more into yourself, leaving life unlived as you struggle to get a fresh start from the monotony of financial struggle.
You fall into patterns of spending that do not satisfy your real needs, sometimes spending recklessly on items you neither need nor truly want.
If a pattern of out of control debting is examined, one of its main support systems is terminal vagueness.
In order to halt this insidious pattern, awareness is the major weapon.
Control of your finances is regained and maintained through awareness and vigilance.
You can maintain awareness by taking note of credit card, loan company and bank advertising and reflecting on its effect on YOU.
Meditating on how the debt has impoverished your thinking causing you to believe that there is not enough out there in the world for you. Become willing to change your outlook and cease believing that financial struggle defines who you are. You may be in debt but that is not a measurement of your intrinsic worth as a human being.
Keep a record of your daily income and spending, no matter how boring or pointless this seems. This ‘keeping the numbers’ is a major step in imposing financial discipline on yourself and acts as a bulwark against vagueness and denial.
Make a list of all unsecured credit and mentally face up to the fact that you owe this money and that someday you will repay it.
These actions bring about a progressive personality change which changes your attitude to money and your relationship to it.
As your relationship with money changes for the better, you will find that fear and worry decrease and a new sense of personal power changes your life for the better, sometimes miraculously so!
You will feel more in control of your life and the sense of existential crisis will disappear.
