Our Personal Finances

A few days ago I cleaned our home office/library so that I have a more “official” place to work. It was amazing to me how much clutter we accumulated in this one little room. This room also proved an old “piece of wisdom” to me. Clutter attracts clutter. (Could we talk about “clutter clusters” like the “happiness clusters” we wrote about a few days ago?) Next thing you know, you have a ton of clutter that looks all too overwhelming to get rid of.

What does that have to do with our personal finances? For one, I think that a clean office helps me work better. I like having things well organized. It’s got to be the same for personal finances – getting things together (bills paid, paperwork filed, etc.) makes personal finance much easier to handle.

Second, cleaning the office sparked one thought in my head that has a lot to do with lower debt. You see, I think that running up high debt balances is very similar to accumulating a lot of clutter. A bunch of different debt balances clutter our personal finances, don’t they?

Also, just like clutter clusters work, it seems to me that once you have some debt it is so much easier to add to it. Debt seems to attract debt just like clutter attracts more clutter. Next thing you know you are looking at as much debt as I looked at clutter in my office recently.

How do we get rid of this financial and material clutter now? How did I do it? Well, I think I tackled that issue like most people would tackle lowering debt. First, I’m like everybody else: after having accumulated a ton of clutter, I did not really want to clean it. I have been meaning to clean the office for months, but I kept putting it off. The task seemed too overwhelming, so I procrastinated for a while. Really, I procrastinated for a long while. Where should I even start?

But, a few days ago, I walked into the office with the determination to clean it right then no matter how many other things I knew I had to do or wanted to do before cleaning the room. I took a hard look at the place and then I picked one task that really did not need that much attention. I sorted some bookshelves on which I had been stacking books I read, but which I never put into their proper place. (I admit it, and don’t care if I do. You all know by now that I am pretty anal.) Anyway, when I was done with this task, it was so much easier to get into the nittty-gritty of sorting through stacks of papers. Maybe it was just that I started that made it easier to continue. After a few hours I was done. And today I am working in my home office, feeling really good about myself, and my “new” workspace.

I think the road to lower debt is similar. First, you are overwhelmed by the task ahead. Then you ignore it for a little while hoping it will go away by itself. That usually makes things worse. After some procrastination you finally decide, “enough is enough,” and you start organizing your finances. Maybe you don’t tackle debt right away. Maybe you look at your net worth first when you realize that debt is your big problem. This realization leads you to finally do something about your debts. Lowering debt may not be done as quickly as cleaning my office, but the process is very similar. You got to start somewhere and keep going until you are done. When your financial life is de-cluttered from all its debt, you will probably feel at least as good as I do right now.

By the way, a fellow blogger also wrote about clutter recently. He connects his purchasing decisions to the clutter each purchase potentially creates in his house. Read more at “What motivates you more: frugality or decluttering?”