Have you ever been on a long vacation where you ate, drank and barely moved, and toward the end you start to think to yourself…man, I really don’t want to check that scale when I get home?
Me too.
Despite this, you know that you should, and when you finally do check the scale, you allow yourself to come to terms with the damage done so that you can reenter your routine of cleaner eating and regular exercise.
Assume for a moment that, instead of checking the scale, and instead of reentering that healthy routine, you have a series of business trips where the problem gets worse. You continue to eat fast food and neglect the gym at your hotel. What happens then?
You are likely to gain weight by allowing your health to slowly suffer.
The same is true of your financial fitness.
Let’s look at Drew’s.
Checking Your Financial “Scale”
Drew is an IT contractor with an irregular and unsteady stream of business. Sometimes business is booming…other times it is slow.
He works hard to support his wife (Michelle) and kids (Lyla and Leo), and he recently had a string of costly and unforeseen expenses.
It began when his mother-in-law passed away and he and Michelle had to cover the funeral costs (there was no estate). Cost= $7,000.
That same month, the A/C unit for their Florida home went out. New unit + installation= $4500.
Typically, their savings would withstand the $11,500 in costs, if not for the fact that Lyla just started college, and a semester’s worth of her New York dormitory was due upfront.
With little savings and no emergency fund, Drew (understandably) placed the funeral and A/C unit on credit. With this being one of his “slow months” for business, there was already little wiggle room.
Yet, the unfortunateness of those two events is not what ultimately compromised him financially. When business picked back up, he only paid the minimum on his credit cards instead of aggressively paying them down. Months went by and before he knew it, he was $20,000 in the hole. Instead of staying current and reviewing the status of his outstanding credit balances, he didn’t want to look because he knew how quickly the debt was piling up.
Check the scale…regain your health.