Another Financial Reason to Avoid Procrastination

Are you looking at your financial blueprint right now? Given that it’s the height of summer, chances are that you might be. This is a time or year where costs really do rise, because it’s taking more and more to cool down our homes. The heat makes people feel tired and sluggish, but it’s not impossible to reach your goals. You just might have to look at things from a different perspective.

You see, if there’s one thing that can really ruin your finances, it would have to be procrastination. Procrastination is something that definitely triggers a set of problems for most people. When we wait till the last minute to do something, we’re hoping that everything will just fall into place. We’re hoping that we’re not going to have to deal with the consequences of our procrastination. For some things, it’s fine to procrastinate. Nothing really happens. Waited too long to see a movie in the theaters? Oh well, you’ll have to wait till it comes out on DVD now. However, if you wait till the last minute to pay your credit card bill, you’re going to have some late fees that are a problem. You have to make sure that you’re looking at the bigger picture when it comes to getting things moving in the right direction. With credit cards, if you continue to pay them late, your interest rate is going to rise higher and higher. The default rate triggered is very expensive. This slows you down from achieving a stable financial path because most of your money is going to go towards the interest rather than the payment. It’s more money in their pocket, it that doesn’t mean that it’s helping your position at all.

If you can slow down and think about the bigger picture when you procrastinate on financial issues, you’ll be able to start moving your life into a different direction. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that it’s impossible to get your finances reversed if you’ve already gone too far.

The truth is that you have options. For example, you might be able to work out an IVA structure, where you can have your debts rolled into one. It’s not for everyone, because it means that you have to pay on time, every time, for a period of 3 to 5 years. That’s a long time of making on-time payments. If this is not something that you know that you’re going to be good at, you might be in for some trouble before you really know what to do with yourself.

It’s all well and good to procrastinate here and there, but not on financial issues. You need to get your bills paid as soon as they happen, not when you think it’s a good time to interrupt whatever else is going on in your life. You probably remember to pay the most critical bills, because they’re really urgent. But some people put them off, or worse — they take the money that’s earmarked for bills and they spend it on things they like, only to have to scramble in the end to make the payments that they should have made in the first place. Your will find that there are always troubles to be had, and it’s best to do what you can to avoid them. The more that you can work towards this goal, the better off you will actually be.

No one is saying that you can’t have a great time — which is usually then first argument that we get when we try to address someone being loose with their finances. If you tighten up your financial issues, you’ll find that you can do a lot more fun stuff.

I know this from first hand experience. When I was really young and just starting out, my finances were horrible. I prioritized hanging out with my mates rather than focusing on paying bills. I ended up having to do through a lot of challenges before I realized the common denominator: me. If I wanted a better life, the person I needed to ask was looking right back at me in the mirror!

The truth here is that you’re going to have some heartaches and challenges. You’re going to have moments where you feel like you’re doing the wrong thing. You might get a little too emotional about your finances. It’s easy to compare yourself to others and find yourself caught up by jealousy. The reality is that our personal finance issues are so private that we never get the full story of other people’s money. We might think that someone else is so comfortable because they live in a big house, only to find that they struggle to keep up with the mortgage. Or we might look at someone that has a nice car, and not realize that the lease payments are eating them alive.

You have to focus on you, and you need to stop procrastinating. Having a strong budget helps cut down on procrastination, because you immediately know how much you can spend, and how much you need to hold back.