Stress and Financial Decisions — WIAGF 006
Stressing over money is a very terrible position to be in. It is one I dread greatly. In recent years, I’ve been made to understand the importance of being on top of one’s finances. In the past year, I’ve had so much more experience with making financial decisions of various sizes, most I made was wrong, a few I survived through.
One thing I’ve understood from these poor decisions over and over again is that the easiest way to avoid the stress of finances is to think and plan long term. For a lot of decisions I’ve had to make with my money, every single time I find that once I think long term, my perspectives change.
Thinking and planning long term is a hard thing to do really. Having to plan in weeks, months, 3+years, 5+ years, decades is hard, believe me. Only a few people do it as it takes a higher level of intelligence and discipline to do. Every day, we make decisions with our money and while it is fairly easy to think short term — it happens by default, applying long term thinking with respect to value and ROI one’s perspectives changes a lot and fast.
Whenever I personally think and plan long term in my financial decisions, there’s a lot more clarity and quality to my thinking and I can make decisions more intentionally.
After every financial stress, I’ve had to go through and then applying hindsight, it turns out that the financial stress resulted from the cumulative of poor money decisions I made from short term thinking and planning.
This week, I was in such a position again, stressing over money. I felt bad for myself that I haven’t truly learned, still, I’m grateful I am able to make such financial decisions at a very young age while learning a lot from my mistakes.
Putting all of these learnings to practice is something I’m beginning to be deliberate about. I know how much better my life could turn out from these and for this I am grateful.
