Confusing wants and needs...Part 2

I told you about a friend who moved in with family to save money and pay off a stack of bills he had collected.

During his stay with family he had several set backs. One in particular is a common set back when there’s no pain.

I’ve talked about no pain no gain.

Here’s what happened to my friend. He and his wife would spend a few extra bucks on non-essential items to reward themselves. The only problem with this reward system was there was nothing to reward.

It wasn’t as if they paid off a bill and than celebrated. NO. Instead, they would reward themselves with short two-day trips, jewelry, hobbies, and on and on.

It’s not so much that you need pain to gain. It’s about doing without until you can pay cash for it. (see past post about, “I never deny myself anything”)

The reason it’s painful or should be is because you need to break the FREE SPENDING habit. It’s difficult to do (hence the pain). If you make it to easy for yourself (like my friend did) you’ll find yourself in the same boat when everything’s back to normal.

What my friend doesn’t understand is once he leaves the relatives what’s going to stop him from spending excessively? Until you change the behavior that got you into trouble you cannot stay out of trouble.

Here are a few symptoms. Borrowing more money to pay off other money borrowed. I knew of a couple that would borrow money out of there home to pay off all the credit cards. Within six months they would borrow heavily on credit cards in be in the same boat as last time.

They did this 7 times. Eventually their home didn’t have enough equity to borrow out and pay off their credit card bills. They never recovered. The reason they never recovered is because they never stopped borrowing on their credit cards.

It’s like a disease. You absolutely must change your behavior and eliminate borrowing all together. Once the behavior has changed you won’t get into trouble again. That’s why change requires a little pain.

The more pain, the more you’re likely to change your behavior. For my friend who lived with relatives he never changed. He got out of enough debt that he could afford to move out again.

Guess what ended up happening? You got it. He went back to spending more than he made and back into debt again.

Read my posts on how to change your behavior so you to can be COMPLETELY debt free. I call it debt free living. It’s the only way to go.

David…