My golf game will be doing just fine and I’ll be plodding along, slowly chipping away at a stroke here or there. This year has been the year of my fixed drive, which I’ve been enjoying quite a bit. Where I used to have a low, line-drive hook, I know have a high slice. Head down, swing through, and the slice goes away.

The strange thing is that as I seem to be doing well, I get a bit overanxious and my swing speed, particularly with my irons, starts to pick up. I lose a bit of my rhythm and end up pulling the ball. It’s as if my hands just pick up speed and I come around to quickly. Whether it’s my hands accelerating, or my hips slowing down…they get out of sync.

Just when things are really starting to roll for me, like when I was two over after eight holes…all I needed to do was par the last hole and I would beat my personal best by a stroke. I doubled it. I pulled my nine-iron on the approach shot and then had an indifferent chip shot, forcing me to two-putt.

When the pull starts creeping back in, I always go back to the basics:

How’s my grip?
Are my hips active on the backswing?
How’s my rhythm? (The solution to any rhythm problem I have is to always slow down).

If I can revisit each of those and do some checks, the pull goes away and I get my nice, normal (very playable) draw.

And so it is with money. It pays to revisit the basics when things start to go a bit off course. Are you finding that your EGG (a term Erin, YNAB’s online coach uses for Entertainment, Gas, and Groceries) has increased undesirably? Are you slacking on your Rainy Day funding of known but inestimable/unforeseeable expenses such as car repairs and medical expenses?

Has your debt-paydown intensity lessened?

Go back to the basics. Revisit your budget. Make sure you’re tracking every dollar. Ensure you’re living on last month’s income (only!). Fund your Rainy Day categories dutifully. Roll with the punches only when absolutely necessary.

This isn’t a tactical savings tip, but I think every once in a while we all need to be reminded that course corrections are a part of the journey — not failures, just fixes.

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