One of the hardest part about this new poverty crap is learning how to maintain some form of discipline without prior training. Money in a credit card just wasn't real. Bank accounts didn't have a real bottom if you don't look at the balance at the ATM. You needed that money now. NOW. How else were you going to buy that bagel? Or the cool socks with the flying pigs you just saw in the window. Or the book on inner peace with the matching $10 meditation piece of rock? Inner peace was not cheap. And it was more meaningful than the bank account. And, like the bottom of a fairy tale well, the money filled itself when it ran low. Even if you only intended to pay the minimum to keep it that way when the credit card bills rolled around.
This is good for you, this reprogramming part. I swear. It will make you a stronger person. It will not last forever if you work hard to kill that debt and get work again. This is the part where we relearn how to be consumers so that when the bank accounts are full again, we will not set ourselves up for another fall.
Make money a real thing, not just expendable pieces of paper in your pocket or a number in an account somewhere. It seems like the less we have in our pockets, the more we are aware of exactly what we have, what we have "left." We value it more because if you think of it as gone forever, you let go of it less easy. Which is why I strongly suggest not keeping more than ten dollars in your pocket at a time for un-earmarked cash.
Say you have a twenty in your bag and you break it because you hear the siren song of a tall soy latte at the fancy coffee place. And what's a latte without a biscotti, right? It's tea time after all. Blood sugar and all. Right? After leaving a tip, you will probably walk out in the neighborhood of 13 bucks. A ten and three ones. You blew through a third of your money but you still feel okay about it because there is a large bill that is NOT a single plus a couple of others.
Okay, say you have a ten dollar bill. You do the same thing. That leaves you with three dollars. THREE. If you had to have a coffee, did you really need it to be a latte? I can understand the whole hanging out atmosphere thing, but a single cup of tall coffee probably would have tided you over and you would have more left for the next couple of days if you had a need for a coffee call again. Three dollars is almost nothing left. Thirteen not so much. Get it? We rarely value something till we don't have it anymore.
"What if I need something a little more substantial and don't want to keep racking up atm fees? What if I need it is something I need now with cash?" You ask. Well, that's where what my daddy used to call the band aid box comes in. He kept a metal band aid box with a couple of bucks in case of emergency. It had rocks in it in case sticky fingers tried to abscond with it from his bedroom closet. There was always at least a twenty in there in case the sky fell. Which did, occasionally, happen. Usually with me attached to it.
I think everyone should have a band aid box with money...even if it isn't a REAL band aid box....that is protected by a promise not to be touched unless you really and truly are in a pinch and there is no way to get to cash fast. Or if you flat run out. It cannot be touched without prescribing to a rule of conduct.
Repeat after me: I will not touch the band aid box unless I absolutely have no choice. This is where you will keep the magical forty dollars. Two twenties. One to use. One to have just in case twenty ain't enough. More than forty isn't spending money any more.
Back in the day, I used to know people who had rolls of bills in their pockets. It was flashy. I admit to being impressed. But when I look back, I hope they were really really rich. There was no way they could have been keeping track of what they were spending. And if they weren't really really rich, there is a good chance they are sitting in the same place that I am. Wishing I paid more attention.
www.bandaid.com
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