Money Security – How Does It Matter?

Does having clear understanding your money status seem important to you?  Your answer to that question may be yes, or may be no.  If yes, no need to preach to the choir.  If no, twisting your arm about it will have to wait for a another post.  But if your answer is “I don’t know.” or “I’ve never thought much about it.”, you won’t be alone.

And also, you would have to admit to not knowing whether you are financially OK or not.

Think for a moment about where your money planning is in terms of priorities.  If it falls to the bottom (or even off) your to-do list, shouldn’t you ask yourself why?  For most people, likely reasons are:

• lack of money knowledge or understanding
• fear of facing “the dark room”
• not knowing where or how to start taking action

Now, it is likely if you are well-familiar with the first of these problems, you probably live with the second and third as well. In any case, you are living on luck!  That needs to change.  One of the brutal truths about luck is you can’t count on it to smile on you.

The following quoted material is paraphrased from the Financial Planning Guide – Part 1, which is part of the free downloads available with the 7 step MINT Method:

“To better understand why you should care about personal money situation, let’s reflect a bit on the impact that a healthy money situation has on how you live.

• Looking at the daily mail is not a source of anxiety. Any bills that arrive are for the goods and services you have used in the immediate past. Because there is adequate cash to keep current, paying bills is simply one more thing you do as a matter of course. No sweat, no agony.
• With the bills paid, there will likely be some amount of money left over for the month, and the decisions to be faced are what to do with it. Possibilities include saving it, investing it, paying extra on the mortgage or some other large debt to get ahead, or buy some “but I want it” item.
• If you are wise and save or invest a substantial portion of the leftover money, you will have the luxury ‘problem’ of keeping track of the growth of personal net worth, and doing the homework necessary to manage it in a manner that is appropriate for your specific circumstances and goals.

Every coin has two sides. Let’s look at the flip side and ponder living with being ‘broke’ or nearly so.

• Facing the arrival of the day’s mail is to have a pit in the stomach. The ringing of the phone causes a wave of angst. Overdue bills outnumber the current ones. Because the supply of cash is less than the demands made by the bills in hand, paying becomes a game of “who unleashed the biggest dog, and how close is it?” With all the other, often unavoidable, stresses in life, who needs this one?
• Because some, most, or all of the bills are overdue, what is left over at the end of the month is not cash, but unpaid debt carried to next month. Will it be any easier to get paid up next month? Not likely. So now the decisions to be made include who to pay next time, how much, and what to tell those who are left off the payment list. Actually, these are not decisions. Decisions are made when there are alternatives. In this case, alternatives are smothered under excessive obligations.
• Until this downward spiral is broken, there will be no choices to be made. Without choices there can be little point in dreaming. The future is merely something that will happen to you!”

So, now do you care about where you stand?

Finally, one very important thing to realize about “how it matters” is that the issue is about much more than just you!  It matters because there are those who

love you and

trust you!