Photo by scubaham

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about changing my habits.  This year has been a pretty good one for me in general with changes to my habits regarding health and finance.  Another area where I’m going to be focusing this year is going to be on habits related to time management.

As I was thinking about my time management skills, I noticed a theme arise from my pool of thoughts around procrastination.  I’m actually a very experienced procrastinator.  I’d almost say I’m pretty good at getting things done when I really need to.  The problem is that I just can’t seem to complete everything plan for…just what’s on the first half of my to-do list.

Realizing I Was Borrowing Time From Myself

It hit me…like a Nerf bat to the head a half-dozen times in a cartoon-like fashion.  The source of my procrastination could be coming from my habit of borrowing from something I don’t have yet.  In this case, it’s time.  For example, when I’m cleaning out the garage I sometimes pick a corner to pile up things that I’ll go through later.  I get 75% of the garage cleaned, but then I’ve got this awful mess of stuff in a corner that’ll take me longer than that first 75%.  It’s very easy to walk away thinking I cleaned "most" of the garage, only to have to take twice as long next time just sorting through the mess to clean it correctly.

What happened here is that the first time I was cleaning, I really had the time to do it all correctly…but I ended up putting some of it off to do later, even though I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have in the upcoming weekends.  As it turned out, I was pretty busy the last 4-5 weekends and the mess is still there.  What I did was borrow future time in my mind that I ended up not having later because it was already allocated to something else.  So I wasted the time I had to go watch TV or something useless (I really don’t remember) essentially borrowing time in my mind from future weekends to finish the job I could have done now.

The Debt on Time

That borrowing of time from the future is the same mentality that got me into a financial mess with tons of debt!  Do you see the correlation?  I’ve borrowed a bunch of money to pay for things now based on some future income I’ll be getting.  With the garage, I borrowed time to complete the task later based on some future weekends in the schedule.

Photo by marina~

Now, since many of my weekends are filling up with other obligations, I’ll have to work twice as hard to manage enough time to eventually clean it all up.  I’ll probably have to do a little at a time over the course of a few weeks to finish it instead of being able to do it all at once.

This is the same predicament I’ve got for my finances!  It’s obvious that a behavior change is needed across the board here.  The debt mentality doesn’t stop at just finance.  You really need to break the debt habit with more than money, it can be applied to time the same way.  I’m not just talking about for chores either.  It can show up in lots of places:

1. Quality time with your family.
2. Finishing up a project for work.
3. Writing blog articles.
4. Paying bills.
5. Household chores.

I think your time management will improve if you think about your procrastination habits with the same despising hatred you have with debt.  I certainly have noticed a change in my attitude this weekend.  I had some family here for the holiday, and all the time I thought I’d have to do random tasks was completely eliminated by a change in plans.  Not that I regret spending time with family, but I’d have not put off so many things for the weekend instead of just doing them during my first opportunity!  I wouldn’t have procrastinated!  I wouldn’t have created my own debt on time.

How many of you seem to never have enough time for anything, but know your top 3 American Idol picks or can tell you all about the latest Lost romance?  Maybe it’s time for a re-examination of your time debt.  Got any other examples of things you’ve borrowed time for and still haven’t done?  Share your time debts with us, I’d like to hear if any of you are having some of the same issues.

Well, I finally did it.  I cut up all my credit cards.  Well, technically I just ran them all through my shredder, but I think that still counts.  LOL

I was inspired by the contest over at The Penny Saved that I mentioned a couple weeks back.  It’s funny, I got them all in a nice big stack on my desk and I’ve been looking at them all week…but I almost forgot to get my submission in on time for the contest!

Here’s a picture of the remnants all dumped out on my desk.  Granted, there’s a few pieces of paper in there, and admittedly there’s a couple of expired cards too…but I just cut up 11 credit cards and 5 store cards!  (I also threw in a couple of check cards that overflow into my credit card as well.  Take no chances!)

 Maybe we’ll get a prize from the contest, maybe not.  I don’t care either way as this was something I needed to do anyway.  It felt good to get rid of some of the cards we simply don’t want to tempt ourselves with anymore.

You also should have seen the look on my kids’ faces when they saw me do it!  Priceless!  Here’s a couple lines from the conversation immediately following:

"Daddy, how are we going to buy stuff if you don’t have your cards?"  *blank stare*

"Well son, these cards don’t use our money.  I’m tired of using someone else’s money to buy things, so now we’re going to use our own money out of the envelopes when we need something."

It was a great opportunity to show them that if you want to change something in your life, sometimes you just have to go for it even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Take an opportunity to show your kids something unfathomable.  Cut up your cards with them today!

Update: I won 2nd prize!  Wheee!

One reader, Zach, shared his thoughts on one of my posts about comparing ourselves to an out of control family in some horrible debt.

I have to admit that I was actually raised in a frugal home.  My parents always had debt to pay off and grew up with a hate for it.  My wife was in a similar situation as well, but was very spontaneous with her spending in college.

Why Did We Start Spending More?

Photo by blake

The biggest change for us was when I landed a very well paying job in IT after college.  We saw these huge numbers (with respect to our parents) and immediately started a spending habit that was way beyond our means.  It was way too easy to just let things get out of control when you thought you could just make up for it in a couple of months.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people into debt to begin with.  Thinking you have control of the future and can make up for things later in order to get that instant gratification that you want today.

How Did It Turn Out?

Well, as you can see by just being on my site, it didn’t turn out all the great.  In only 10 years, we’ve managed to accumulate over a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS of debt and end up with a negative net worth!  I could go on and on about just how much this has effected us, but all you really need to see are those massive numbers.  Every example I could come up with were because of the same thing, thinking we could pay for something tomorrow what we thought we needed today.

How Do We Get Back In Control?

Photo by Almaz

The biggest thing we had to do was to acknowledge that over time our bad debt habit was going to bury us in financial problems.  Not only that, it would bury our children in our financial problems as well.  That was where we had to draw the line.  A very important part of breaking this bad habit was to stop thinking we could pay for things later.

Once we began to enforce the rule that if we don’t have the money to pay for it, we simply can’t get it.

"What?" you say.  "That’s it?"  Well, pretty much…yeah.  Simply stop the procrastination.  Our debt habit was completely based on the fact that we thought we could control our actions AND our circumstances.  Ten years of that not going right and I think we’re finally on to something…we can’t always control our circumstances.

Have any of you found yourself with bad debt habits that were difficult to break?  How long did it take you before you realized you even had them and had to do something about it?  Drop a line and share with us. 

Awhile ago I stumbled onto this article at the Consumerist.  I have to admit, I was skeptical at the spin that was likely put on it to make it sound worse than it was.  However, even with spin…holy cow. 

In a nutshell, it’s an article describing a family with six children (something I can relate to) that are well over 100K in debt spending frivolously each month while they’re about to lose their homes….making about 60K/yr.  Ummm, yeah.  OK.

The Comparison

Then it hit me.  How different are we from this gal?  I mean really.  To keep it simple, let’s not count the house here and just add up everything else.  I’m in the hole roughly 60K, I have six kids, and I only make about 80K/yr.  And if you count the Christmas months late last year, I’m not so sure I can really do much bragging around this lady in the article.

Ouch.  That really hurts.

The Difference

Well, I’m actively TRYING to make some progress here.  I’ve already gotten over the whole denial thing and the "keeping up with the Jones" issue.  Just the fact that I know I have a problem and freely admit it has to count for something.  Right?  Ok, I’m stretching here…cut me some slack. 

So, the difference is we’ve got incentive and definitely know that there’s hope.  Lately, we’re trying to come up with all kinds of ideas to help improve our situation.  Where to cut back, how to bring more income in, how to simply sit on our hands for a couple years instead of charging away our lives with every swipe…all things we think about on an almost daily basis.

The Challenge

Am I just gonna sit back and say things like "We’re not like her!  We don’t have that problem!  What a looney!"  Well, I guess I kinda just did.  BUT NO!  We SHALL endure the hardships that we’ve brought forth upon ourselves!  We shall prevail through the harsh sit-on-our-hands weekends before loitering the local shopping establishments!  WE WILL NOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE THE NEXT CONSUMERIST ARTICLE!!!  (OK, a little overboard with the drama, but you I hope you get my point.)

So, anyone else out there just completely shocked?  I have to admit, it’s simply an example of how easy it is to drown yourself with debt in this country.  It’s definitely a template of what not to do, but it’s even MORESO an example of how easy it is to commit financial suicide.  Are you like this lady?