The following post is from Melissa Batai
Many of the thoughts and biases we have toward money and money management are deeply ingrained. They may so deeply be a part of our belief system that we never stop to question them, which can ruin our finances.
Have you ever been guilty of these ways to sabotage your finances?
Don’t Budget
Who needs a budget? Just spend your money. After all, you worked hard for it, right? You deserve to spend your money any way you’d like. You can pay bills with what’s leftover. Hopefully, there is enough left over.
Impulse Shop Sales & Pay Interest
Shop the sales routinely. As soon as you get notification about a sale, go shopping, either in person or online. Snatch up those deals and be proud of your great finds. Never mind that some items will never be worn, cluttering up your closet with the tags still on for years to come or that you’ll pay more than full price for these items after you’ve paid all the credit card interest because no one ever pays in full.
Don’t Learn What Your Credit Card APR Is
Don’t worry about your credit card interest rate. Just continue to pay the minimum payment, and don’t take the time to see how much of that minimum payment is going on principal and how much is going to interest.
Don’t Try to Be Debt Free
Life is so expensive these days! Everyone has a car payment, and everyone has credit card debt. Some people live debt free? Ha. Clearly, those people have no fun and no life. Life is to enjoy now. You never know how much longer you have.
Have the Monthly Bill Mentality
Are you buying a house or a car? Don’t worry about how much the car or house costs let alone how much you’ll pay in interest over the life of the loan. Nope. No need to worry about that. Instead, see how long you can stretch your payments to get the lowest minimum monthly payment. Take your home mortgage out for 30 years and your new car loan for seven years. The only important consideration is that you get the lowest monthly payment that you can.
Refinance Your Home Frequently
Each time that you do, sign up again for a 30-year mortgage. In this way, you can stretch your home loan over 35 or 40 or even more years, hopefully reducing the monthly payment each time, which gives you more money to spend on the things you want in life, not the bills.
Aim for Student Loan Forgiveness
Who wants to buckle down and pay off the student loans as quickly as possible? Nope. Student loans are a necessity now to get through college, and, of course, you must go to college to get a job to support yourself. Your plan is to choose the student loan repayment option that has the lowest monthly payment. Then, after 30 years, your loan balance will be forgiven. You’re impressed with yourself and your strategy to avoid paying off all your student loans. Never mind the interest you’ve paid for 30 years.
Millions of Americans live by these financial assumptions and beliefs without considering how much each belief is costing them or how much of their hard-earned money they are losing with this mentality. Don’t be one of them.
Have you ever sabotaged your finances in these ways? What other ways to sabotage your finances would you add to this list?
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