Tell Me How You Spend Your Money, I'll Tell You Who You Are!

With the promise of a fortune-teller, I sound less like a financial planner than a circus soothsayer! Still, even the most appropriate financial planning advice depends on you knowing yourself. Many super-achieving, type-A types still fail in their own financial success because they lack perspective on themselves.

This lack of perspective can actually be linked to our successes! Many of us are achieving because we are born with or have cultivated vision – vision of what works best! Then we have the gumption to go do it.

Our focus on what OUGHT to be done creates our financial planning blind-spot. I should save more, spend less, invest more diversely, minimize fees, take only objective advice, cut out bad fats, exercise more, read to the kids every night, use coupons when I shop… perfection is the goal! I have no time for my flaws. But we do have flaws and they’re tripping us up. We think we need to find the right time to enter the market and pick the right stocks in order to retire. In truth, we need to start by maximizing our 401k contributions!

Here’s how to start reading your own financial tarot cards: most credit card companies provide a year-end summary statement. Read it. When I was single, these statements used to report 40% of my money went to plane tickets, 30% to dining out, and the rest to “miscellany.” Today, my “married with children” statement reads Costco, Costco, gas, Whole foods, gas, gas, YMCA, Stride Rite, zoo. The Chik-Fil-A dining out doesn’t account for a rounding error. If I want to increase my savings, I know what to do: keep my Costco splurges to a minimum!! When did I become the woman impulse buying the dog pillow at the warehouse store?!

But there it is, that’s who I’ve become. Now I need to work with that reality to change my financial future. Your epiphany will shine a different light – maybe you’ll realize the clunker you’re driving is piling up bills and it’s time for a new car. Maybe you’ll realize the new car you bought is a lemon and you need to trade it in! Maybe you’ll discover you’re giving to every charity that solicits you, but you’re scraping together the cash to make a minimum credit card payment monthly.

Read your reality, then let me know what it says! That information will change the way you spend your future.

By Marie Claire Allvine