You Have the Time...

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By Melissa Tosetti

The most common excuse for not taking care of critical financial tasks is that we don’t have enough time.'

Bull snot!

The truth is that there are just so many other things that we’d rather be doing.

There’s a famous saying that, if you really want to do something you’ll find away.  If you really don’t, you’ll find an excuse.  Of the things you find yourself resisting, you have to figure out what it’s going to take to get those tasks taken care of. Don’t get me wrong.  We do lead ridiculously busy lives.  I address that in one of my favorite articles that I’ve ever written titled, 3 Tactics to Avoid the 20 Year Sprint.

However, we also waste a tremendous amount of time staring at our phones or whiling away on social media.  This adds to a perception of busyiness.  If we have a pocket of free time, we immediately reach for our phones or log onto social media.

Sometimes the problem is that financial tasks never get on our to do lists.  When you find yourself reacting, becoming uncomfortable because you saw that yet again you were charged for a subscription you’ve been meaning to cancel, that can be a trigger to get that task on your to do list because otherwise, it will take forever before it gets done.

So, how do you spur yourself into action?  Consider this strategy:

  1. Create a deadline to execute the task. If it’s cancelling a monthly payment for a service you no longer use, your deadline could be before you’ll be billed again.

  2. Next, add it to your to do list or block time on your calendar to actually get it done.

  3. If it is a task that you have been procrastinating on, give yourself a prod. Promise yourself a reward when it is completed.

For more ideas about how to get those critical financial tasks done, check out the recording of our Caffeine TV session we did.


Melissa Tosetti is a cash flow planning expert, founder of The Savvy Life and author of the international bestseller Living The Savvy Life. 

For the past eight years, she’s worked with over 625 individuals and families to create Spending Plans.

To learn about the Spending Plan process, visit The Savvy Life’s Home Page. If you’d like to learn about how The Savvy Life works with financial advisors and their clients visit: The Savvy Life Advisor’s Page.

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