Page 57 - Workbook2E

Your Financial Stress Profile—Evaluations Stressor No. 5 Financial Discipline from page 37
In today’s world it is often easier to avoid responsibilities and commitments. You can go out of town or not answer your telephone. Simply hiding from your creditors in the hustle and bustle of modern life, will sooner or later catch up to you. Avoidance greatly adds to your stress and won’t resolve anything. Having discipline in your financial affairs is more cost effective and creates less stressful detours on the road to financial freedom. Consider these recommendations based on the results of Your Financial Stress Profile questionnaire.
You’re currently quite disciplined in handling your financial affairs.
You feel you can count on yourself. That’s great, as long as you don’t expect others to be as disciplined as you.
Always use written contracts and daily planners. Confirm appointments and agreements with phone calls. A paper trail will protect you from people less disciplined and more prone to impulsive whims in their financial dealings.
Avoid the tendency to become stern or regimented in your life. Your discipline will allow you to travel more freely through life without fear of many of the problems that plague unsteady people. Use your self-control to benefit others. Help them to rid bad habits from their financial attitudes and dealings.
Avoid the pitfall of becoming over disciplined. A few hills and valleys along the road keep life interesting.
You’re currently moderately disciplined in dealing with your financial affairs.
You may occasionally resist doing what must be done. But realizing this can help you to avoid the stress created when you occasionally let yourself down.
You may sometimes find your spending exceeds your income. Use your discipline to temporarily scale-back your life style.
Seek ways to increase your income and find ways to better manage what you’re presently earning. It’s a matter of choice. Choose to control or eliminate the wasted time in your
life. It will greatly enhance your financial discipline and success.
Encourage those you’re responsible for to also learn financial discipline. Be an example by action, rather than only words. Their successes will encourage your own.
Seek help with unfamiliar things but don’t surrender responsibility. Your financial affairs are your own.
You’re relatively undisciplined in dealing with your financial affairs.
Addiction is the opposite
of discipline. Compulsive behavior doesn’t add to your safety or security.
You often allow money to control you, rather than controlling your money. Spending money to soothe other stresses and problems will always only create more problems and stress.
As with any habits, breaking bad money habits may take
a long time. Don’t expect
to realize success overnight. First identify one of your least stressful money habits and work on it until you feel it’s under control. Then move on to the next and so on. Starting with your biggest problems may be too difficult and discouraging. Take it a step at a time.
Share your successes, no matter how small, with a trusted friend. Talk about what’s
going on in your life. Your confidence will grow, as will your discipline.
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