Take away my computer, my software, and every and any other financial tool available to me and leave me with nothing except a stack of blank paper and a pen and I will still be able to win financially.

I would take that pen and craft a weapon fit for wielding against any of my financial enemies (temptations of easy money, the procrastination of retirement savings, the allure of a flat-screen TV mounted on a wall connected to a Nintendo Wii — for bonding time with the boys, among other things).

That mighty weapon would look a little something like this. Time invested: 25 seconds:

I would diligently record every single purchase I made. Every time money flowed out of my life there’d be a record of it. I would not just record the “significant” purchases because I would know that every single purchase is significant. It’s the aggregate of all your financial decisions that matters most, and every time you spend money, you’ve made a financial decision.

Once my paper was full, I would write down the beginning and end date at the bottom and total the spending. I would then create another similar weapon and follow the same process. I would write down everything I spent. Every time.

This little exercise, occupying perhaps one hour of my time each week would plant a seed of awareness inside my brain with the potential to grow into a mighty oak of financial prowess. It would only take a bit of nurturing and protection.

Software Can Destroy Awareness
Why are financial tools a potential threat to your finances? Because they quickly desire to move in the direction of the software doing more so you can do less. Less doing means less awareness, and less awareness means your progress will be slowed tremendously. As a software developer, I’m keen on giving customers what they want. They’re happy and tell their friends about the software, which in turn makes me happy. The merry cycle continues. However, where I see a potentially new feature threatening the users’ awareness of their financial decisions you will find me kicking, screaming and dragging my feet.

I dragged my feet when it came to software importing transactions. I was wrong on that one (though the slope is slippery). I’m dragging my feet with auto-categorization of imported transactions. Time will only tell with that one. I refuse to offer the ability to let users set one budget for the year. I want users to revisit their budget often — very often. I’m vehemently opposed to software automatically linking with banks and syncing transactions for you whenever you want if that software purports to help you spend less money and make wiser financial decisions. It may do that to a degree. But its impact is weakened substantially.

Banks Work Hard to Destroy Your Awareness
Banks have worked hard to destroy our awareness. That seed that you plant when you start to become aware of your financial decisions is fragile and exposed to external forces that want so bad to destroy it. Banks have been extremely successful in selling us on swiping instead of digging into our wallet and counting (don’t underestimate the counting that used to be required when you spent money). How do we fight back? We go home and go through the psychological process on our own, recording exactly how much we spent and why we spent it.

Automatic billpay is a great time saver and I’m a big fan. But I only remain a fan because I go through each of my financial decisions several times per week and record how much I spent, and why I spent it. I fight back. I protect my awareness.

When you Let Awareness Do Its Thing
When you actively nurture that seed of awareness, ensuring that you’re recording every financial decision you make, the seed will eventually grow into a mighty oak, immovable by any force (regardless of the offer, OAC of course..[written with searing sarcasm]).

That might oak will represent your core values. Marketing can’t change them. Social situations can’t change them. Friends can’t change them. They are your core values.

The natural extension of my paper-turned-weapon would be to begin to plan what I would like to do with my money before I spend it. Recognizing a balance between cost (time) and benefit, the planning should happen at least monthly and more frequently if you derive measurable benefit from that. That planning is called budgeting. Forget all of your preconceived notions about budgeting being restrictive, for tightwads, or something only businesses need to do (the logical hole in that last excuse? Big enough to drive a Mack truck through). A budget is a plan. Heck, it’s your plan, so why the beef?

As you write down your spending diligently, you will desire to change things. It won’t be because someone’s breathing down your neck telling you to stop going to the mall so often. It won’t be from some uncomfortable outward pressure. It will come from inside — from your core actually. Your core values will slowly begin to speak to your mind again. Your common sense will emerge from its hiding place. The cobwebs of financial confusion will slowly disappear and you’ll have financial clarity.

Notice here I said clarity. I did not say peace. I did not say bliss. I said clarity — the close cousin of reality. For too long you’ve been muffling the voice of your core values and ignoring the pleas of your innate common sense. You’ve earned and spent and earned and spent, walking on a treadmill leading absolutely nowhere. Now that you’ve increased your awareness, those core values and common sense aren’t quite so afraid to speak up again. They’re anxiously awaiting an opportunity.

That opportunity for your core values to speak is during the planning process. You sit down with the clarity that you now possess, with Common Sense sitting on your shoulder, and assess your situation. Through the lens of clarity you now see things as they really are. You now see reality. Inside reality you’ll find you make the absolute best decisions. You may decide you can put off the desire for X and Y, so you can focus more on paying off all of the past desires of A through W. You may, through that lens of clarity, be receiving whispers from your common sense, and feeling your core values (finally) actively participating, realize that your financial future is actually in your hands. Goals will begin to crystallize and you’ll feel that you’re headed in the right direction.

It’s important to realize, once again, that being headed in the right direction is not the same thing as being in the right place. You may have taken a long detour through La La Land before you finally realized that what you were doing wasn’t working. Take comfort in knowing that you’re correcting course and going where you want to go. The beauty of the whole situation is that you will feel content with your situation. Money may still be tight, health problems may still strike, prices may still go up, but you will be operating from your core values and you will be content.

All of this from persevering with a pen, a paper, and a plan.