Self-Sabotage Finance

It seems like almost everyone has money problems of some sort.  How rarely do you come across someone who, if asked, "Do you have any money problems?" would say, "Absolutely not."  If you are one of these people, I applaud you.  You'll probably live to the age of 130 simply for not having to bear the weight of all that constant money stress.  The scale of the problem (for the rest of us) varies quite a bit, from having $20,000 of credit card debt and living outside your means to simply not being able to save as much this month as you wanted to.

The thing with money problems is that you can become attached to them.  They tend to become a part of you and your personality/self-identity.  There's a certain appeal to being broke, or to constantly trying to save more and more.  It's a problem we can all relate to, so it bonds us to other people with similar problems.  In addition, there are certain behaviors and beliefs that we adopt which contradict our desire to resolve money problems.  For example:

• You don't like to look at your credit card statement because you don't want to know how much you spent.  This is a primitive defense mechanism that avoids the problem while making it worse (and we all know this but sometimes can't stop it).
• You don't want to pay off your debt because you know you'll just buy something else right away once you can.  I know plenty of smart people (especially common among early adopters and technology lovers).  However, if you can't trust yourself, you'll never allow yourself to be responsible enough to solve the money problems that you have.
• You dislike people who don't have money problems.  You'll never attempt to resolve your own problems if you think having problems makes you a better person somehow.  It's possible to solve problems without creating new ones.

There are many more of these kinds of behaviors and beliefs hiding within each of us. They are harmful because they are contradictory to other behaviors and beliefs that you might have.  Real stress occurs when you both feel bad about having money problems, and don't want to solve them... this creates a constant pressure of stress and tension that is unresolvable.  One side or the other of this pressure needs to go, and in that way you can either learn to love poverty (there are some advantages), or begin to take active steps in resolving whatever money issues are currently bothering you.

A challenge: This week, all of us at the Robot Co-op have decided to track everything we spend money on for a week, and are going to try doing it a number of ways.  The goal at this point isn't really to solve our money problems just yet, but simply to become more mindful of the money that comes and goes, as it comes and goes.

This post was inspired by this slightly more bitter post of things you can do to sabotage your life: Tutorial: How to Sabotage Yourself - Associated Content [via Lifehacker]