One of my biggest challenges in budgeting and managing our household finances is Lack of Self Discipline. It has actually been my biggest problem in life in every area!
There are very few people who don’t suffer from it, they are usually the accounting types, they are the people who say to me, when I talk about budgeting or setting up a spending plan, ‘yes you’re right, I already do this. You are not really telling me anything new.’ The rest of us, we try all sorts of computer programs, spreadsheets, workbooks etc and still can’t seem to get our finances under control for any length of time.
I have tried them all, how about you? I’ve tried to do the spreadsheet thing – I went through this phase where I would actually fill in a spreadsheet with everything I purchased for the month, it was broken down into lots of categories and it was all really pretty and very detailed – and I did it for about 2 months. Then I got behind in filling out the information, it was all too hard and so I just scrapped it.
If you are like me you don’t want to be filling in spreadsheets or workbooks all the time you want to be able to set up your budget/spending plan once and then forget it.
That’s what I do now and have done for many years now an I will share it with you in my book.
One of the biggest challenges I see when I help people budget and manage their household finances is relational espionage and financial infidelity.
In the video, we had a bit of a laugh about it however, if it is happening in your relationship it is certainly no laughing matter!
Let me explain – Financial Espionage is when you set up the budget and your partner sabotages your efforts to get the finances under control, there could be a couple of reasons for this behavior.
Maybe the plan to change the finances was made by one partner and the other partner feels as if they have no control over the situation, because they have been “put on a budget”, either they disagree and a “discussion” follows, Or they go into covert Financial Espionage and they say (usually under their breath!) ‘Oh yeah – sure we are’ and then they use relational espionage to ruin the budget.
Maybe the partner doing the Financial Espionage is feeling neglected and is “paying them back for the neglect”. There may be others but these are the main ones I have seen.
Financial infidelity is where you buy things for instance a dress (I use this one because I see it often), put it in the wardrobe, take the tags off and six months later you wear it out. Your partner says ‘oh is that a new dress?’ and you say ‘oh no, I’ve had it for ages’, It is the truth because you have had it for ages. But we know deep down it’s a lie. Both sexes do it, it just seems that it’s the women who admit to it!
If you want to change your financial situation then these sabotaging behaviours need to be overcome. If you have a problem communicating with your partner then maybe some professional help is in order.
Whatever you do it is important to forgive and work together on a solution.
