Tiffany Raiford
Your entire life story is based on your activity – or your inactivity. Whether you are struggling to make a career change based on your unhappiness or you are struggling with your finances, it all comes down to one thing; your activity. Do you actively seek a way to find a new job that will make you happier, pay you more, require less of a commute or better insurance, or do you sit back and wish you had one without doing anything about it? Do you wish you could create a budget and save more money, or do you actually create one and then save more money? Are you passive about life or do you get up and make it happen?
Procrastination has a hugely negative effect on your finances and it can dig you into a hole so deep you might never find your way you out. Of course, you’ll worry about that after lunch, right? Listen, I’m a borderline procrastinator; I like to get up early, write, get things done and not have to think about things on my to-do list anymore. However, I will put other things off until the last possible moment imaginable. After all, nothing makes me more productive than the last minute. I thrive on the stress of working on something at the last minute, and then I hate myself when I’m in the moment.
What I’m trying to say is that our desire to put things off makes our lives a bit more difficult and miserable than they have to be. If you’re not sure you believe what I’m saying, let me just tell you how much your procrastination can cost you.
Retirement Repercussions
Let’s say that you decide you will start saving for retirement, you will. Soon. You promise. How about you get through this year and get some debts paid off and then you start saving. Except that turns into next year, and the next year and finally you’re close to retirement and hit with the realization that you cannot retire thanks to the fact that you didn’t start saving. You always had time, and then you didn’t have time.
Financial Repercussions
You bought a new home, and now you want to furnish it. You go to the furniture store and you walk away with thousands of dollars in new furniture for every room of your house after being approved for a ton of credit with the in-house financing. Now you have two whole years to pay off your furniture and you have all that cash you saved for it still sitting in the bank. Sounds like a great vacation fund, right? You’ll just save a bit here and there and pay that balance off before it’s due. Except you don’t; and now you’re paying 25% interest on furniture you may or may not even have anymore, and you’re spending thousands more than you should have.
Work Repercussions
When you procrastinate on that one thing your boss asked you to do, you feel you’re okay. You have time. You’ll work on it the day or so before it’s due, and it’ll be great. Then your kids get sick and everyone is down with the flu and you literally cannot get it done. You’ve had a month, you need three hours, and now it’s due and it’s not going to get done. You have to tell your boss, who is going to see you as less than responsible, assume you do not take your job seriously and probably give your next promotion to someone who shows a little more effort and enthusiasm for the job.
Photo Credit – Getty Images
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