DECISIONS
DECISIONS
Recently, I listened to a sports radio talk show, during which the commentators were discussing a certain NFL player from my favorite team, who, during the off-season, made a bad decision and is now serving a 30-day jail sentence. One of the commentators is a former NFL player with a wealth of “hindsight.” He summed up the situation as coming down to three points:
- CHOICES
- DECISIONS
- CONSEQUENCES
The jailed player was offered many choices by his friends. He made the decision to do something illegal and is now facing the consequences of that decision.
Although many of the choices we confront each day are not illegal, we are constantly bombarded with so many of them! Decisions take up a lot more of our thought process than they used to. As a result, the chain of consequences for each and every decision can seem endless!!!
One of the biggest decisions is how we spend our money. My car has 233,000 miles on it right now. I know that a different vehicle needs to be a choice I will make in the next year, so I am now researching makes, models, and features of future choices, as well as putting money aside monthly for this big decision. As many of you know, our daughter is getting married in four months. Early on, we set a budget with her. It takes a lot of her/our free moments to consider all of the choices and then make the best decisions that fit our budget. It also takes a lot of tracking on the part of my husband and me to make sure we end up with sufficient dollars from the money we have set aside for these festivities to ensure that the consequences of the event are happy ones!
We need to slow down and weigh each major decision carefully. There is SO MUCH information to fill our brains that research can be time-consuming. If you can see a major decision coming in the not-too-distant future, it is not too soon to research and evaluate. Well thought-out and planned choices make many decisions easier when we are faced with them. And we will be more satisfied with the consequences!
“If you measure something, you can understand it. If you understand it, you can control it, and if you can control it, you can improve it.” The same holds true in your monthly budgeting.
The reality is that it is nearly impossible to complete & follow a monthly budget without improving your overall financial position. There are several reasons for this, so I would challenge you to do this.
First, just developing a budget for yourself will raise your awareness of what you have for revenue or income sources and then also boost your cognizance of how much you are spending each month. Next, you will come to grips with the reality of one of three facts. Either you need to boost your income sources, reduce your outgoing expenditures or, thank goodness, if you have more income than expenses, you can then save some money. Of course, this is fantastic! You just need to determine where you will store or invest those extra funds each month…