My Bad Money Habits
Posted by Canadian Dream on October 26, 2009. Filed under [Misc]
Everyone has them. Bad habits are just there. You likely know you shouldn’t do it, but you do it anyways. Now when it comes to money that gets a bit more interesting, since some habits are really not a good idea (like paying high fees for no reason, or putting all your pension money into the stock of the company you work for).
I’ve worked hard to overcome a lot of my bad habits, but still some remain. They are:
- Quote Checking. I’m a horrible stock quote/pension plan value checker. I tend to look at least once a day despite the fact I know it’s pointless and it won’t change anything. It’s really a waste of time, but I still do it to see the trend.
- Fixating on Stupid Purchases. After spending several years cleaning up my spending habits I have unfortunately gotten into the habit of questioning every purchase I make. Do I need this? What am getting from this purchase? Instead of just letting it go and accepting it’s ok to make a impulse purchase once in a while. I need to ease off a bit more about where my spending cash goes.
- Not Filing or Throwing Out Paperwork. I must not have got much mail as a kid or something, because I tend to keep far too much paperwork. Which would not be so bad except for the fact that I’m bad at remembering to file it all. I’m currently looking at a pile about two inches thick right now.
- Playing with Online Calculators. I’m horrible for running slight modifications to my current plan when I know the answer will be about the same. When will I pay off my mortgage? About 3 to 4 years, so knowing it’s going to happen three months earlier or later is rather pointless but I would still do a run on a calculator when I get some new information.
So that’s my current list of bad money habits? So do you share any of them or what’s your worst habit?
9 Comments to this entry.
My worst habits have to be:
1/ Logging into my yahoo e-mail account 10 times a day just to see if I have a message.
2/ I’m with you on being fixated on stupid purchases - i spent 10 minutes wondering if I should purchase a magazine this weekend.
I guilty of #1 and #2 as well. I’m sure alot of us can relate to your feelings.
I have the same habit of checking my trading accounts and mutual fund accounts for values once a day… It’s not healthy to be so micro all the time, you end up making micro decisions that impact the macro picture - often to the downside…
For me anyways…
Over-analysis when buying stock which is only made worse by blogging since I have do research which makes me think even more.
Checking prices of stocks and my ETFs multiple times a day. But it goes in cycles. I may check all the time for 3 weeks then not check at all for 3 months, then repeat the cycle sometimes. The cycle is bad, as I sometimes make bad decisions then. But its also good, as I follow news more then as well so come out learning.
Just need to learn to strike a balance I think.
Good, I feel less alone !
Apparently checking stock prices is a fairly common habit. Good to know I’m not the only one. Heck I bet we could get enough people together to start an online support group for it.*grin*
Tim
Hilarious because I share some of your pain here. Do I really need this? Can I find it cheaper? How far am I willing to drive to find it cheaper?
Sir, are you buying this pack of gum?
Mike
OMG this is so funny! I am logging a lot on my personnal email and banks accounts «just in case something changed» and feel ridiculous each time
But I would like to get more in one of your bad habit: to question every purshase I make, because I don’t do it regularily, and this would be helpful to me I think!
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