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[parthenia]

Day 3: The route to financial loveliness

I'm not sure I can even explain what I did today without incurring derisive or incredulous laughter, but it boils down to this: I opened a credit card statement and read it, then I logged on my internet bank and paid it. I read all the way to the end of the statement, all the transactions, and I cringed at a couple of them because they represent more bits of financial tidying-up that need to be done. The steps are in order of severity, I suppose: I fix the biggest, stupidest, most expensive problem, and then I go on to the next one.

Today deserves a little gold sticker. parthenia14 was brave at the bank today.

I think I must have some kind of bizarre malfunction when it comes to thinking about money because I engage in all sorts of stupid, stupid, really really fucking stupid practices that I would scoff at in someone else's story. Because, really, how can anyone be that dim?

Possibly people with ostrich-like attitudes to financial management, that's who. I hate admin even when it's my own very best interests. I hate financial admin the way I hate washing up and sorting laundry - dull dull dead time when I could be doing something way more productive like ...watching television or reading or surfin the internet. Yes. Jeez. I cling to being disorganised, being fluffy about money. It's mad.

Anyway, one action a day is good. You don't get stuck in horrified self-hatred, you keep on moving. These last three days have been the big hits, the eyewatering ones. Next up are the teeny weeny dribbly moneylosing things, like forgotten subscriptions.

Also, what all the books on organising yourself never tell you: the key to overcoming some of the resistance to the dull repetitive is to make them nice things. Rather than the latest tune from radio KFCK (as fabu would describe it) playing in your head, I play some music or drink a coffee while I'm doing it. I think I'm slowly making the unpalatable job into a little treat, making the tedious chore a bit more meaningful. Quite why it all needs to be this resistant, I'm not sure.

Anyway. Progress is being made, even if it is postively glacial in nature.

ETA: I have just discovered Moneysavingexpert.com and its terrifying DemotivatorDemotivator (cost calculator for daily Starbucks, and other vices). In this way it turns out I spend £200 a year on the Guardian. 0.o

Comments

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Yep, fair enough. What looks easy and elegant from the outside often isn't. I aspire to being a bit more compulsive on this one...