Today we talk about the balance between guilty spending and stuff you want. The Budget helps you navigate those tricky waters!
Today we talk about the balance between guilty spending and stuff you want. The Budget helps you navigate those tricky waters!
Jesse, thanks for this Whiteboard Wednesday topic. I cannot agree more heartily! I went through a long 12-year slog to get out of smothering student loan debt (finally shed it in 2006) and the single most important thing I learned during that decade-plus phase of reckoning with debt retirement is what you said here: if you have decided to allocate some dollars towards a (desired) purchase, then when you spend those dollars, ENJOY the entire experience in full. Garnering this degree of relish from having planned to spend, then spending what was planned, was the single best quenching force to silence spending cravings. Learning to inhabit my money world, and coming to understand that if I had already taken care of my savings portion and my debt retirement portion and my giving portion, then what was mine to spend could really be spent with mindfulness and joy – and all the other STUFF out there that I had not planned to buy stopped calling out to me, and all sense of deprivation fell away. Money management = stunning personal peace and amazing liberation from the anguish of the guilt/desire quicksand. Thanks for highlighting this!
Thanks, Jesse! This was very timely for me as I’ve just put in an offer for a lease purchase and am looking at a very hard year ahead of me as I try to pay down existing debt and prepare a deposit for the purchase. ~Thomasina
Thanks Jesse! This whiteboard couldn’t have been more timely. I’m one week away from completing my first 60 days using YNAB and I have been beating myself up for spending way more in certain categories than I originally planned.
I appreciate the reminder that these first two months really were first, an opportunity to learn what I actually spend my money on (vs what I thought I spent my money on) and second, to be more mindful when I am making spending decisions.
Thank you for reminding me to be gentle with myself!
And before I forget, thank you for designing YNAB and sharing it with total strangers. This program is changing my life! I feel money-responsible, at last. Thank you.