One sure way to get into or stay caught up in a financial mess is called the “ostrich approach”. Ostriches are pretty cool birds, but they are known for sticking their heads in the sand when confronted with danger. In case you are curious, ostriches do not really stick their heads in the sand – that is myth which has been perpetuated through time. They do lie down and play dead when confronted with something that they feel they can not outrun. The “ostrich approach” is still an appropriate analogy for what not to do about messy financial situations. Some of us (probably more than you might think) do sort of lay down and play dead when confronted with a complicated or seemingly insurmountable financial situation.
The variety of financial messes that we can get ourselves into and stay caught up in is tremendous. People are continually finding new and creative ways to make money mistakes large and small. Personally, the financial issues that I would like to hide from are old credit card debt and enormous student loans. I will admit that thus far, I have not done a very god job of looking these things squarely in the eye and formulating a solid plan for dealing with them.
As much as I like ostriches, I think that it is time for me to change my approach to dealing with financial challenges. Organizing all of my financial information is the most logical first step because as I mentioned yesterday, having everything scattered about can cost you money in multiple ways. Of course, keeping things scattered and disorganized is a wonderfully convenient way to avoid actually knowing what is going on with all of your debts and accounts. If you are like me and you are thinking about organizing your financial information, why not also take the time to create a complete picture of your current state of financial affairs – after all, you will be looking at all of those pieces of paper anyways and getting an idea of what is going on is a logical step in the direction of figuring out what to do about it.
Photo by heyjude on morguefile.com.