“Oh, sh*t not overdraft charges again… ” “Where did all this cash go?…” “Life is too expensive” “I work full-time having a good job and still do not earn enough money for my family” “I said “NO” that ice-cream is too expensive, we are not buying it”
Does any of this sound familiar? These are my own phrases that I find myself saying often. I have an awful relationship with money. I fear logging into my online bank account. I don’t know exactly how much money comes in and how much do we spend.
And… I had enough of this.
I have decided I will change it no matter what. And I will be writing about my journey to a better relationship with money here in this blog.
My blog primarily focuses on productivity and feeling happy and fulfilled at work. And I figured being productive also includes being rewarded well for the work you do! If we change our reality from “overworked and underpaid” to “happily working and underpaid” it is just not good enough. But then again, the reward for our work consists not only from how much we earn but also how much we get to keep ๐ And we will only know how much we get to keep if we count the money and have a close relationship with it.
So I want to spend some time blogging here about changing my relationship to money to a good one!!
Today with the beginning of new month (May 2011) I am starting this journey. And here are few steps that I am taking.
1. My new mantra for the beginning of this month: “I am entering into a new phase of having a very different relationship with moneyย – a good one!”
2. I did the following exercise to start creating a new, positive relationship with Money (thanks to Kendall SummerHawk).
On a piece of paper I have described one of the positive, healthy relationships that I have in my life to a real person, putting down all the wonderful details. Then I have substituted the name of the person with the word “money”. I am going to re-read this description every day to help me make my relationship to money as loving and fulfilling as possible.
3. 1st of May is the day when I started counting how much I earn and how much I spend.
I am going to do this by using a simple Word doc file, where I will jot down my spending and earnings every day. In the earnings I will include everything: my paycheck, money that comes from selling my mentoring programs, selling on ebay, rewards, cash backs, any other unexpected income and … benefits ;-).
In the spendings I will again write down everything to a penny. By doing this I’ll aim to increase my awareness of what I am spending money for.
This is a huge (and difficult) thing for me, and I have been mentally preparing myself for this for the last couple of months. I think I am ready now ๐
4. I am going to watch my “money conversations” becoming aware of the thoughts I have about money throughout the day (inspired by this post from Christine Kane’s blog).
5. During the month of May I am going to make an inventory of all my financial assets and liabilities.
I will be posting about the results and the experience of all of the above shortly. Thanks in advance for all your support.
๐