Every minute of life we are learning some important lesson. We can choose to learn from the experience or we can ignore it. If we choose to ignore the lesson we can bet we will be experiencing the same thing again and again until we learn what we need to.
I am learning about money right now. My other half and I are now doing the bills and finances together. The good news is we make enough to pay our regular bills and we could begin paying off some of our debts. The bad news is we are seriously behind on several bills and that is killing us this month.
Accepting the fact that the money you make is just going to pay bills and that generally speaking there won’t be any money left for “luxuries” is a hard thing to do. Many people become overwhelmed and frustrated by this and they choose to ignore particular bills if they can. That is how we get ourselves into trouble. Denial is part of the problem with finances. People just don’t want to “deal with” that type of thing, so they ignore it.
Yes, paying bills is stressful and often times near impossible. Sometimes you can’t pay everything that needs to be paid and sometimes things like car repairs or hospital bills can really wipe you out.
You simply cannot keep allowing yourself to “fly blind”. Ignoring the problem only makes things more difficult in the end. Knowing exactly how much you pay on bills and how much is left over will surely wake you up and yes it will be scary… but it will take you steps closer to living within your means and it will help you get caught up!
I want to encourage everyone reading this to sit down tonight and add up all your monthly expenses. Subtract those monthly expenses from your monthly income. How much money will be left over when you pay all those regular bills every month??
I know that the answers to these two questions can be depressing for some people but knowing about your bills and income will help you. If you know how much money you have after bills then you are less likely to overspend and you will begin to limit the frivolous spending. If you are not able to live comfortably after paying the regular bills maybe it is time to sit down and try to eliminate some nonessential things.
Last night after getting my own financial reality check I made up a spread sheet for myself in Microsoft excel that adds and subtracts all my numbers for me. All I have to do is punch in my bill amounts and my income. The spreadsheet is helping me sort through everything and slowly but surely we are going to get things straightened out financially and hopefully get out of debt!
I am learning a lesson about my finances right now; living within your means is the ticket to financial freedom. Ignoring the problem is just a copout and it only makes things harder to clean up in the end.