Facing your finances isn’t fun.

You don’t have a financial plan:  When you fail to plan you plan to fail. Just think about the times you have been successful in life. I bet you had plan during those times. You had a goal in mind, and you took the incremental steps on a day to day, month to month or year to year basis. You knew what success looked like for you.

You must apply this same logic to your finances. Your financial plan should cover your immediate needs and your long-term needs. Immediate needs include financial goals you want to achieve in the next 1-3 years. Long-term needs include those goals 3+ years away and can include purchasing a home and saving for retirement. Note, I separate investment and retirement goals because you can have investments for retirement and outside of retirement.

Financial Avoidance:  You have an out of sight out of mind approach to your finances. When you don’t have a plan for your finances then you are less likely to want to face them. Instead of checking your bank account to see how much money you have, you rather avoid looking and keep spending. Instead of investing in a 401K you figure you have time to do it later. This approach is easy in the moment and non- confrontational but there are consequences in the long run.  

This is what we call financial avoidance. You can avoid your finances all you want but they can and will come back to haunt you.

Scurred to look at those finances

You think you don’t make enough:  Whatever you make can be managed. There isn’t a magic number that dictates whether you should face your finances. If you can’t manage $10,000 then you wouldn’t be able to manage $50,000 or $100,000 and so on and so on. So, start where you are now. Learn to manage what you call a little bit of money now, so you are ready when you get a lot more money. Also, where you start doesn’t have to be where end.

The Bottomline………

Facing your finances can be scary, unpleasant and simply just not fun. But if you don’t tell your money what to do then it will do what it wants.  Put that fear to the side, roll up your sleeves, and face your finances head on. Trust me, it gets easier over time.