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MONEY matters

Mark Zaifman's thoughts on money, global economic trends and politics

Increasing Your Financial Integrity During the Holiday Season

Mark Zaifman   |    Wed, Nov 23, 2011 @ 12:32 PM
saving money


The pressure to spend lots of money during the holidays has arrived. With that pressure comes the urge to pull out your credit cards and buy now, pay later. You might be someone that spent a good part of this year paying off your credit card balances and now that the cards are paid off, you feel tempted to charge away.

Of course, it goes without saying that you and your spouse or partner needs to develop a budget for holiday spending and entertaining. That’s the easy part. But as we all know, sticking to the budget, especially as the holiday cheer kicks in, is a whole different story.

Ask almost anyone that has taken the time to develop a spending plan for the holidays if they stuck to their plan and the answer for the most part is no, not even close. No surprise there. We have the best of intentions when we sit down and actually come up with a plan on how much to spend, but it’s the implementation part that gets us hung up.

Confronting Your Inner Rebel

No one is going to stop you from spending more money than you planned. Your inner rebel doesn’t like to follow rules, particularly when it comes to money and especially during the holidays. That voice inside your head telling you how much you deserve this new something or other is hell bent on breaking all the rules you’ve set for yourself. Your inner rebel loves to sabotage your financial integrity every chance it gets.

One option for keeping your inner rebel unable to sabotage your plans is by changing the way you look at personal commitments you make to yourself. What if you were to accept that there’s a link between manifesting abundance and financial integrity? That the more you increase your financial integrity, the larger your capacity becomes to achieve financial independence. Wouldn’t that be a superb motivator for keeping your word to yourself?

Instead of saying to yourself: I’m going to spend less this year, say to yourself: I’m going to save more this year. The difference, although subtle, makes all the difference in the world. Saving more is your desire and has a higher energy. Thinking about spending less feels restrictive and punishing, all fertile ground for your inner rebel to come out and wreak havoc with your personal honor code.

By saving more will you end up spending less? Of course you will. But words are important and your thoughts are powerful as well.

Your relationship with money is just that, a relationship that grows and hopefully evolves throughout the course of your life. No one can assess your relationship with money better than you and no one will care about your money more that you.

Increasing your financial integrity is not only is a smart and sensible thing to do, it has the added effect of making you feel really good about yourself, and provides you with peace of mind. And who couldn’t use a bit more of that?

 peace of mind budgeting

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