What Are You Doing Right?

On Beyond Zebra! Poll Results: Home Ownership

What Are You Doing Right?

So often when the talk turns to money, people avert their eyes or scuff their toes against the ground, bashful to even get into the conversation. Not surprising really, since when the talk turns to money, most often it's about what we're doing wrong.

Here's the thing: you can't be doing it all wrong. You just can't. And so maybe what you need to do to open up the conversation with yourself (your partner, your best friend, your sister-in-law) is to focus on what you're doing right.

Are you good at:

getting the best deals?
making your own stuff or fixing things?
sharing what you have with others?
keeping track of your money?
squirreling away little bits of money?
deferring the little pleasures so you have the money for the really big thing?
finding the highest return on your savings account?
negotiating to save money on things you buy?
finding ways to earn extra money when you need it?
stretching a dollar?

Here's what I'm good at: discipline. I may hate collecting receipts and writing down everything I spend, but I do it anyway. I may hate having to post all those entries in my spending journal into my monthly budget, but I do it anyway. I may HATE picking up the telephone and making the call to get a fee adjusted or a service charge removed, but I DO IT! I make myself do it. And until I've done it, my brain won't cut me any slack. So I have to do it to get my brain off my back.

Knowing what you're good at is a great place to start when you're trying to figure out how to make things work better both with your money and your life.

Let's say you're really go at finding a bargain, but you're not so hot on the pay-yourself-first savings approach. It doesn't matter that you pay yourself first and the money is whipped away to an account, by the end of the month you've found you've had to transfer it back because something's cropped up and you need the "savings" to stay even in your account.

Okay, let's take your strength and turn it to the problem with your savings. Sure you're great at spotting a bargain and shopping smart. But if you never realize the savings… if you never take that money out of your wallet and put it somewhere you can't spend it … you actually haven't saved a thing.

So now you're going to use your smart shopping as your springboard to save. You'll open up a savings account called, "Smart Shopping" and every time you save so much as a nickel by shopping smart, you're going to save that money (perhaps in a jar at home first until you've accumulated $10) by moving it to your Smart Shopping account. Now you can measure what a smart shopper you are because you'll have an ongoing running total of your brilliance as a consumer.

The point is that most often you need to find the motivation to do things differently. Starting from a strength is a GREAT idea. Using that strength to pull your areas of weakness into the sunlight and eventually overcome them is a GREAT idea. Knowing what you're doing right, and moving from strength to (growing) strength makes way more sense than always beating yourself up for what you've been doing wrong.

So, what's you're strength, and how are you going to use it to grow even stronger?