A Better Way to Manage Your Everyday Money - Book - Page 15
Chapter 1: What’s Been Missing?
How money flows through our lives is simple: we get a paycheck and we spend the money.
Right?
If only that were true. This condensed view of how cash flows through our lives looks good
because it comes to us naturally. Without being taught anything about money, we understand that
when we are given money we can spend it. Doing so works especially well when our paychecks
are more than we spend, which is true for a few, but unfortunately that is not the case for most of
us. What typically happens is we heedlessly spend more money than we receive in our
paychecks.
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On payday, we pay bills.
The cash that’s left over from our paycheck is ours to spend.
When cash runs low or we want to buy something expensive, we use a credit card.
When the next payday rolls around there is nothing left from the previous paycheck.
This is referred to as living paycheck to paycheck. There is no training needed for this monetary
lifestyle. It’s what we do. Which also means that going into debt comes to us just as naturally.
With credit cards making it so easy to overspend, we are often not aware that we are steadily
sinking down a debt spiral. Minimum payments tend to shield us from seeing what's happening
until our debt load becomes so large that it begins to cause anxiety during the day and keeps us
awake at night. Instead of being a free-flowing convenience, money becomes toxic. Thinking
and talking about money can become frightening as well as corrosive to relationships. Staying
focused at work becomes difficult.
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