Tag Archives: choice

Wasted Money

We’ve all wasted money.  It’s part of being human.  Something looks good in the moment but turns out to not be a great idea in the long run.  We waste money on stuff, experiences and even people.

We buy clothes that don’t fit with the idea that some day they will.  We buy colors that we know don’t work for us because they are on sale or our mom likes them.  We go to an event that is not our thing just to make someone else happy.  For me that would be most sporting events, just so you know.

wastedWe stay in relationships that aren’t working and pay out bucks for the privilege.  We buy the purple chair that we fall in love with but doesn’t go with anything else we own.

We buy food that we don’t like but is healthy that eventually goes bad and gets tossed. We’ve bought lemons and not made lemonade.

We’ve done all sorts of things that waste money and the truth is that we will continue to do that.  Of course, we can get better at it.  We can be clearer about what we really want.  We can stop settling for things we don’t like.  We can stop letting others over-influence our choices.  That’s all good stuff to do, and it will truly help you to both waste less money and treat yourself better.

AND…

Wasting money isn’t as bad a thing as you think it is.  More of it always shows up.  You are absolutely hard wired to have at least enough.  If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you know that I have this whole thing about enough.  Most of us live in that land, Enoughland.  The bad news about that is that it would be more peaceful and easy to live in Plentyland. The good news is that living in Enoughland means that even if you fall down you will get back up quickly. There may be some bad and ugly spots, but you won’t stay there.

Would I like to have never wasted any money in my life?  Oddly, I’m going to say “No”.  Sure, I’ve wasted money, bunches of it.  I’ve made silly choices, dumb choices, even heartbreaking choices.  However, the life I would have had to live to never make any of those wasted money choices would have been awful.  It would have made me crazy and made everyone around me really, really anxious.  Those ‘wasteful’ choices have all helped me to learn and to grow.

The money that got wasted is like the mirage losses that people pine about.  Mirage loss is a term I just made up, this second.  Here’s what I mean.  Let’s say you bought a house in 2000 that you paid $200k for and in 2005 it was worth $250K.  When you sold it in 2008 you got $225k for it and you think you lost $25k.  That’s a mirage loss.  You didn’t actually ever have that money so you didn’t lose it.

The cost of continuing to fret about the loss is more expensive than the actual loss. Think about it.

Say you bought the dining table that was butt ugly and eventually got rid of it.  Okay, wasted money.  Isn’t it better to have gotten rid of it and ‘lost’ the money than to be sitting at that ugly table every day?

So here’s what I say:  “Thank goodness for all the wasted money I spent.  It was worth every penny.”  How about you?  What do you say?

Ka-ching

Shell

Signs Of A Dysfunctional Family

Okay, so we all probably come from a dysfunctional family.  I get it.  There may be people who have perfection in that area, and if that’s true the numbers are slim, and I don’t actually know any of them.  The important thing is just how dysfunctional was your family, and how are you coping with and recovering from that? And what does Dysfunction really mean?

Earlier this year I ran across a blog post by Marriage anddysfunction Sex Therapist, Todd Creager .  He had a video post on the 7 signs of dysfunction, and with his permission, I’ll share a bunch of it with you.

The most important thing he said, the thing that really drew me in was: Dysfunction means you come from a family where you are afraid to be your true self. Wow!  There it is in a nut shell, plain, simple and true.

Let’s look at the 7 signs:

1. You have a hard time figuring out what you want.

2. You feel guilty a lot, your feelings of guilt lasts longer than 10 seconds

3. You end up in non-reciprocating relationships

4. Too much or not enough conflict in your intimate relationships

5. You are really hard on yourself.  Your inner critic never lets you be!

6. You have a hard time relaxing.

7. If you are a parent you are extreme.  You either run the family like a “boot camp” or are far to laissez faire in your parenting.

(to see and hear the entire video go to http://toddcreager.com/7-signs-you-came-from-a-dysfunctional-family/)

Pretty interesting isn’t it?  I know my score is pretty high.  I’ve been working on this stuff for years.  I’ve shifted a bunch of it, and am still a “work in progress”.  The thing I love about this test is that it’s not only approachable but has that sense of practicality.  I heard it and thought…”oh yes, I see that.”  Some of the things I never had really tied back to the family experience, but had thought were somehow just how I was.

And, just because I can’t resist it, let’s see where money would reflect this.  Remember how money is reflective?  How it shows us what we are up to?

Do you have trouble shopping?  Is it hard to choose?  Or do you buy things that you don’t seem to really like once you get them home?  There’s number 1: figuring out what you want.

Number 2: feeling guilty a lot.  This shows up a bunch with my clients.  They feel guilty about many aspects of money…not having enough, not being good with it, not tracking it, etc.

Number 3, un-equal relationships, can be a bit tricky.  Maybe you pick up the check too often, or like several clients you “over gift” and “treat” others?  How about number 4: conflict in your relationship?  We all know many couples do fight about money, and on the other end they hide what they are doing with it from each other.

Number 5: the Inner Critic is all over our money stuff, all the time.  If I had a magic wand, it is the top thing that I would change.  I would stop those heinous, nagging, distracting voices in all our heads!

I blame number 6 mostly on number 5.  It’s hard to relax with the Inner Critic ragging on us to do more, and more, or less and less.

And, finishing up with number 7, it’s unfortunate but most people do the same extreme parenting thing about money with their own children that their parents did with them about money.  That usually looks like keeping it in the taboo, un-talked about place.

So yet another place where money shows us what is driving us and where we are.  It reflects.  It doesn’t actually ‘make’ things happen.  It shows us what we are choosing.

Let’s all work on making different choices.

Ka-ching

Shell