I’ll do better tomorrow.
This is a lie I love telling myself when it comes to forking out funds. I don’t even know if I mean it when I’m saying it, or if I’m just trying to enjoy those few fleeting gleeful moments spent tossing my credit card at the Nordstrom cashier like she’s covered in glitter and her name’s Champagne.
Mistake indeed.
’cause a few moment’s high is exactly all we have before the resultant financial shit show. Whether you hafta have the latest Apple doohickey or require slews of slave made duds woven by one-year-olds to complete you, a negative bank balance doesn’t discriminate by taste.
Which is why the Psychology Today article I just perused on finances had an interesting advice-approach. The tips were mutli-angled, but the message was essentially the same:
Change your change purse habits now – or wake up the same asshole tomorrow that you are today.
One hack is planning for the shorter term:
“What a shit picture you took, Ashley.”
Why, thank you. Yes. Yes I did.
Allow me to translate it for you.
Basically, there’s this perpetual concept where we think we’ll save up a lot in half a year. The problem with this is that it assumes we’ll have better saving habits between now and then – than we practice now.
That’s like saying “Gee I hope I have Tina Turner’s legs when I’m her age!”
Bitch, you don’t have half the Tina stem quality now. And that’s because you didn’t put in the work at 25. Then you continued not putting in the work. Now a decade has passed. Congratulations, curdle thighs. What you win is the following rhetorical question: Exactly how are you expecting to look like a geriatric rock star later if you never implement some gym time now?
Much like waiting to weight lift until an inner tube of middle age emerges, money habits amplify like a cancer that feeds off a steady ingestion of fantasy and procrastination cocktails. Financially, it’s that “My diet starts tomorrow” mentality – which is just as destructive as the “I deserve a medal for burning 100 of my quadrillion caloric intake today”
Which, in this metaphor, can be likened to either spending too much…. or not working enough (because your “lunch break” turned into a meme marathon on the internet until The Itis kicked in and you were no longer productive at all.)
“Now time for my rewar-“ Oh. Wait.
Wrong caption.
*ahem*:
“The things you eat end up eating you.”
And that’s where they came up with this sort of karma cash concept.
I guess.
At first I thought that they were gonna tell me science had finally found a way to tangibly pay me for all the good things thing I’ve done in my life.
Alas, it’s just another approach to avoid self-reproach later.
Or, ya know, homelessness.
That same idea of “I didn’t earn enough” or “I didn’t save enough” snowballs later into the proverbial pilfering from Peter to pay Paul. Poor Peter really gets a peter right in the old pooper there, doesn’t he?
#saythatfivetimesfast
If we fund-pilfer earlier, the worries lessen later.
And Peter’s saved some sodomy.
(Unless your savings account is located in his ass, of course.)
Finally, the following one made me do that humiliating in-public guffaw:
Jesus!
When I finally look like that guy on the right (BTW god please let me die by 50 at the latest. Amen), I think I’mma be frowning all the time. Well, that – or – you know that one permanent expression old people pull?
The one of unmitigated horror about still being alive?
With their mouth agape?
Because they can’t breathe through their noses anymore?
(Yeah, man! That’s the one!)
Mhmm. I’ll have that. Indelibly. Savings or not.
But I’ll bite. Since this program shows the dude reversing between the two things, can’t I just do the win-grin all the time? Avoid the spend scowl? By this logic, with the right financial facial expression, mayhaps money’ll magically manifest into my bank?
Hey, there might actually be something to that as a testable scientific theor-
Sigh.
So, the rule is: whether we’re talking about burning money or calories, we don’t have to blow up today for a tomorrow we envisage via rose colored cataracts.
Also, remember that you’re gonna die. And before you do, you’ll don the expression of an electrical outlet for those agonizing final five years. Will you be eating bleach and crapping your pants?
Yes.
But if you save and smile, you can do it in style.
#themoreyouknow