Money: A Love Story: Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want by Kate Northrup

Author:Kate Northrup
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Hay House, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-09T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 5

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PAY ATTENTION?

I was a freshman in college. I was settling in to living away from home for the first time, being responsible for most of my expenses, and so on. I had started my USANA business that year and the seeds I planted over the summer were finally blooming. As I said, my income was above average for an 18-year-old, and before long, so were my expenses, so there was never anything much left over at the end of the month. My mom was always reminding me to sit down with our investment guy in Portland on my college vacations, but the idea of sitting there with him in his mahogany office straining my brain to understand what the heck he was talking about and what the letters and numbers R-O-T-H-I-R-A-4-0-1-K had to do with each other bored me to tears so I never went.

As you know, after moving to New York, my finances began to get a bit iffy. After a little over a year of allowing my credit-card balance to creep up a bit each month, I started to feel really ashamed. I continued to pay what I could on my balances but not pay much attention to my spending beyond that. I also began to only use my debit card instead of my credit card. I figured if I just used that I couldn’t spend what I didn’t have. This strategy was pretty successful except for when I came across something I really wanted, like a vintage Prada coat that was marked down significantly. Then I would pull my credit card out, promising myself I would pay it off in full at the end of the month.

Eventually I could no longer stand the constant, low-level anxiety that came from avoiding opening my credit-card statements, totaling up my income, and knowing what I spent every month. At this point I was not only increasing my debt every month but also going into overdraft on my checking account pretty regularly. There were several times that I had to ask my sister or a friend to lend me money until the end of the week when I got paid so that I could buy groceries and just have some cash on hand since my bank balance was overdrawn. It was totally embarrassing and I thought to myself, Girl! You have an Ivy League education. You run a successful business. The world is your oyster. What is wrong with you?

But all of it felt too big and overwhelming to figure out all at once. Too many numbers. Too much shame. So I made myself a promise to just check my bank account balance every morning. That was it. Just one little promise. I knew people who wrote down everything they spent and entered it into spreadsheets and totaled the categories and ran P&Ls (profit and loss statements) on their life regularly to stay on top of things. I knew people who put their money in

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