Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Why Do We Need to Hit Bottom to Change?


For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to figure out why I (and so many that I know) need to hit a bottom before we implement change.

My current personal quandary is my behavior change due to the current drought. I consider myself water conscious. I’m very aware of our household water usage. And more often than not, I find myself asking someone (friends and strangers alike) to turn off the tap when it’s running unnecessarily. That being said, I also know that I could be doing a lot more.  

For instance, I’ve known for years, that I should implement grey water usage at home. Years! But it wasn’t until last month when Governor Brown declared the current drought a state of emergency that we finally started using our perfectly good grey water at home.

Step one: We switched from environmentally friendly detergent to grey water friendly detergent. Easy to find and reasonably priced at Trader Joe’s.

Step two: Was already done! This is the part that blew my mind. We were already set up for the biggest change, we just had to make a little extra effort to actually do it. Our washing machine already drains into a utility sink, which makes it very simple to stop up the sink and bucket out the water to water the lawn and plants.

The most ironic part of all of this is that we stopped watering our lawn last spring to save the water since we’re planning on replacing it with drought-resistant landscaping. Now that we’re using our grey water, our lawn is starting to come back.

Now, back to money; because everything relates back to money.

Why do we need to hit a bottom before we do something different to change and make our money better?

I’ve talked to so many people that say “I’m good” when I ask them about their money, but when we start diving deeper and asking more questions, they reveal that they’re not doing so good. Turns out that they’re just making due and they just don’t want to deal with it. For most of us, it isn’t till we hit our own personal bottom that we really change anything. And that’s okay. To each his own and all in good time. 

But I want to ask you: What is your bottom? What does it look like? And do you really want to be there before you start making things better? 

-Leah Schonlank

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 
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