Source: nuttapong punna / Getty
It’s Money Monday back with us with tips on how to stop self-sabotaging your financial life is financial expert Clyde Anderson. He’s also an entrepreneur, author and podcaster and always give us great tips, so let’s jump right in with five tips on how to stop self-sabotaging your financial life.
READ MORE STORIES ON GETUPERICA.COM:
- Tax Day Insights: Expert Tips for Smooth Filing and Payment
- 2024 Tax Season Refunds and IRS Rules with Jini Thornton
- All About Jobs Layoffs, Buyouts & Severance Packages with Money Expert Jini Thornton
Tip #1 The Fear of Missing Out
We do this often because I think our brains are hardwired to self sabotage. We’re hardwired to make choices that long term money losers. So we gotta change our thoughts a little bit. And the first one I say is the fear of missing out. We’ve all heard about FOMO fear of missing out and may cause you to spend money on things that you don’t have the funds to do for you know. So as an example would be your friends want to go on a Hawaiian vacation ou can’t afford to go on a vacation, but you go because you have a fear of missing out. This is sabotaging yourself.
Tip #2 Herd/Mob Mentality
Thing that we have to understand is if we engage in a herd mentality often, herd mentality also called a mob mentality. You know, it’s the idea that urges that we need to be part of a group. We have a fear or the greed of the human desire to belong to something and in a social setting and so an example would be everybody’s got that new iPhone. And you don’t want to miss out, and so you buy one, even though you don’t need a new phone. That is one of the things we do and we kind of stop doing that. We need to do our due diligence and develop our own opinions. Ask yourself, why do you want it? Not just because it’s there and cause your friends have it you gotta make your own decisions.
Tip #3. Overcoming Shame
Overcoming shame that’s a big one, I’m this is that pain. That feeling or experience of believing that you’re flawed. Saying you’re unworthy because you have a lack of money or you’ve made poor financial decisions and we’ve all made bad decisions and we e beat ourselves up over it. But you don’t want to say that you don’t have enough money due to fear of being judged, or you don’t understand. The terms of your new credit card so you don’t ask people to help the way we overcome that is to acknowledge the name and name the feeling. You know, we got to really look internally understand why am I talking or not talking about credit and why does it make me feel sad when I talk about credit or talk about my finances or why do I have anxiety when it’s time to go back to school, shopping or holiday shopping? We got to really reevaluate those things and understand why. What is that connection and why do I feel this way?
Tip #4 Stop Trying to Keep Up With the Joneses
And stop trying to keep up with the Joneses or like my momma used to say, the dempseys. That’s when we do it often and we see people have things and we think we’ll get we need those things that they have to fill some void that we have in our lives. You know, my neighbor has three cars, so I want three cars.
But when we live beyond our means, we usually go into debt. And it hurts and so we don’t have to do those things. We need to overcome that by stop sacrificing your financial stability to keep up with somebody else’s highlight reels. We got to stop doing that. It’s time out for that. So plan for the things that make you happy? Get clear on your own values and then you don’t have to worry about that mentality. Consider your cashless payments, everybody wants to make digital payments. And I sat back and realized how quickly my kids make Amazon payments and they do what they buy stuff and they load up at the door because it’s digital money, not real.
Amazon is so profitable because we’re spending imaginary money. We don’t see it. You know, when you see that money go out of your pocket, you’re more conscious of it. So in order to do that, we got to control this by keeping a budget or financial success plan as I call it you have to watch the bottom line. Notifications on your phone, every time I spend money digitally, it pops up on my phone and I get a notification and know exactly that’s coming out so. Feel that thing happening and I know that’s subtracting from my net worth and so I want to make sure I’m building it instead of subtracting.
