Being broke sucks. Living on the edge of financial ruin, can be stressful and overwhelming. When you’re broke and hating your job, things are much worse. It’s hard to leave ANY job, regardless of how insanely miserable it is.
Struggling with a job you hate job is hard enough, but when you never seem to have enough money to pay the bills, let alone get ahead, things can be pretty damn depressing. Financial stress is extremely difficult on you, your marriage, and your children.
Getting ahead financially is not especially difficult, even in the absence of a high paying job. It all comes down to your spending habits. It seems so simple; spend less than you earn. In reality though is much more difficult than that.
Our society has taught us how to be greedy, needy, over spenders. In fact, it’s empowered us to be downright irresponsible. We want what we want and then we go buy it! If we don’t have the money, we buy it anyway.
With this in mind, here are the top 5 reasons that you will always be broke:
Reason #1 : You do not pay attention to your personal finances
Many young people simply can’t be bothered to worry about their finances. Some will argue that they will earn lots of money at some point in their lives and everything will take care of itself. Others simply don’t care. What’s their strategy? To make lots of money and not have to worry about managing it. You probably have the same mindset; ‘I will sort out my personal finances when I get rich’ , and so you do not care what comes in and how, when, and where it goes.
Reason #2: You have no budget.
Budgeting is a word that strikes fear into our hearts and sends us running for the hills. Why? Because it’s absolutely boring, limiting, humbling, and at times depressing. Unfortunately, lack this ‘ boring, limiting, humbling and depressing’ thing is what keeps you from being financially comfortable
Reason #3: You waste too much money.
This is supremely obvious, but you would be surprised at how few people actually track their discretionary spending. In know, in your brain right now you’re saying that the last point was ‘budgeting’. I’m not talking about that here. I’m talking about tracking. People don’t think about the Java coffee in the morning or the afternoon soda and chocolate bar they buy, but guess what? They will have spent around KES 150,000 in a year on this stuff. The KES 150,000 that could have taken you on a fabulous holiday.
Start tracking every shilling you spend and you will see the difference! Once you’ve tracked, you can budget. Without tracking, you have no idea what needs to me eliminated or limited in the first place!
Reason #4: You spend more than you earn.
There’s just so much stuff out there that we want to buy. Every time you walk into a clothing store, or the supermarket, you feel like losing your mind because you fall in love with everything you see. Spending more than you earn can spell a financial disaster for you. At first it may only feel like you have a few shillings on your credit card. As you begin to spend more than you earn that few shillings can end up being a few thousand shillings. Add a few years to the mix and you’re in massive debt because you chose to spend more than you earn. And its not just your credit card; its the sandwich guy at the office that allows you to buy as many snacks as you want and pay him at the end of the month. It doesn’t take very long,and suddenly, all it seems like all you do is pay debts and borrow money.
Reason #5 You don’t earn enough money
Most people reading this are probably thinking ‘Finally. This is MY reason. It should have been number 1‘ I chose to put it as the last reason because, frankly, and speaking from experience, most people lie to themselves that they do not make enough money, that if they made just a little bit more, they would be able to extricate themselves from ‘brokeness’ pap! This is usually a lie. This reason would only make sense if you had a budget, paid microscopic attention to your personal finances, kept a budget and did not spend money on crap. Unfortunately, if you actually are still broke, even after being prudent, then get a new job, or start a side business.
There are a number of other reasons why you could be broke, but these are the 5 most common we’ve seen. So what do we do? Find out in the next post 🙂