How much random kindness can you afford? I’m not talking about giving on any large scale here, but small day-brightening gestures involving small sums of cash.
For example, Josh lives in a city where a major traffic artery is a long toll bridge. The toll used to cost $1.50. Every now and then, he would hand the booth attendant $3.00 to pay for both his own car and the car behind him. It was a small act of random financial kindness that he enjoyed.
Now, only a few years later, Josh doesn’t pay for the person behind him any more. The toll has gone up to $4.50. That’s a bit more random kindness than he can afford.
Tags: Conscious Giving
From Kathleen Fox
As she huffed and puffed through her workout at the fitness center, Angie told us she was going to Red Lobster for dinner that evening to celebrate her granddaughter’s birthday. Someone said, “Good thing you’re working hard, if you intend to eat any of those biscuits.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve already decided not to. It’s just not worth it.”
That brief statement included two great tools that apply to conscious finance as well as conscious fitness.
Tags: Conscious Spending, Financial Goals, Money and Your Brain
From Kathleen Fox
It was all my grandmother’s fault. Really. I am simply not the sort of person who would commit trespassing, theft, or fruit-filching. I would never have picked chokecherries off the neighbor’s bush without permission, if it hadn’t been for Grandma.
One of the important elements in learning to make more conscious money choices is becoming aware of our money scripts. All of us hold deep beliefs about money, usually formed in childhood. These unconscious beliefs, which we usually don’t even realize we have, shape most of our money behavior.
Here’s an example of how money scripts can be formed and passed down to future generations. While this particular belief of mine isn’t about “money” specifically, it is certainly related to money concerns and a need to be sure there is enough.
Tags: Money Beliefs
From Kathleen Fox
If you were given $10,000 and told you had to use it for something self-indulgent, a “want” rather than a “need,” what would you buy?
This question came up in a recent conversation with a close friend. After a little thought, he decided he would use his on a trip to Tahiti.
This probably reveals more than I care to about my money scripts, but I couldn’t think of a thing to do or buy with mine.
From Kathleen Fox
Who do the Joneses keep up with? Or, if you want the grammatically correct version even though it sounds funny, with whom do the Joneses keep up?
“Keeping up with the Joneses” has become such a cliché for conspicuous spending that it never occurred to me till this week to wonder where it came from or just who the Joneses are. The phrase came from a comic strip of the same name by Arthur R. Momand that ran in many American newspapers from 1916 until 1945. The infamous Joneses were neighbors who were referred to by the featured characters but never actually seen.
From Kathleen Fox
As a former farm girl and and confirmed feminist, it is a trifle embarrassing to admit that I have never changed a tire. I attribute this to a combination of luck, the invention of steel-belted radials, and the much-appreciated help at various times of chivalrous guys in pickups.
I have watched tires being changed on various occasions, though. Besides, I was paying attention back in driver’s ed class when Mr. Andresh explained the importance of details like loosening the lug nuts before you jack up the car. So I do know how to change a tire—at least theoretically. It feels like a task I ought to be able to manage if I have to.
Maybe that’s why I was so reluctant to call AAA after I backed out of the garage the other day and heard a funny noise that turned out to be a flat right rear tire.
Tags: Do It Yourself, Money Beliefs
“It feels like I’m learning everything the hard way! I don’t even know enough about some of this stuff to know what questions to ask.”
A friend of mine, who started her own business about 18 months ago, had just discovered she had been reporting some supply purchases incorrectly. As a result, she will have to track down 18 months’ worth of receipts and pay some back taxes.
This woman is actually doing quite well at hacking her way through the thickets of state and federal tax regulations, corporate reporting requirements, and accounting procedures that come along with being a small business owner. Every now and then, though, she still encounters a requirement that she hasn’t known about.
Tags: Business, Financial Goals
Just for the fun of it, try this little research project. For a couple of days, keep track of the decisions you make and notice which of them are related to money. You may be surprised how many of them are.
Money is certainly involved in a lot of small, everyday choices: whether to pack a lunch or eat out, whether to sign a kid up for soccer camp, whether to buy that shirt off the clearance rack, and lots more.
Money plays an even more important role in many larger decisions: choosing a career, saying yes or no to a job offer, where to live, whether to buy a house or rent, what kind of car to buy, and many others.
Given the essential place money has in modern culture, it’s perfectly appropriate for finances to be part of these decisions. Where things get sticky is when money becomes a deciding factor in choices that shouldn’t be financial ones.
Tags: Conscious Finance, Thrift
“But you should pay more! I only have five dollars left. That’s not fair!”
One of my grandsons, near the end of a two-week visit, was trying to convince his brother to pay more than half the cost of gifts for their younger siblings at home.
Both the boys had started the trip with the same amount of spending money. The 12-year-old still had quite a bit left. The 11-year-old had spent most of his. There was the four-dollar plastic T-Rex on a stick. The six-dollar caver’s hard hat with the attached light that almost worked. The candy from the convenience store. The treats at the swimming pool.
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