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Money problems are more about management than they are about money. That’s why more money won’t fix the problems.
To put it bluntly, if you are already hip deep in money problems, you ’ll just mismanage more of it when you get it.
Suppose the money problem is “Too Much Credit Card Debt.” That’s like floating along in a canoe that’s packed full of big boulders. Just a little tip one way or the other, and suddenly you’ve got a boat full of water and no room to maneuver. If your car needs an unexpected repair, the refrigerator goes out or one of your teens drives through a neighbor’s garage door, then you can’t handle the sudden expense.
“Too Much Credit Card Debt” would appear to indicate you need more of a buffer, and theoretically more money would give you that buffer. It’s a logical conclusion, and just reasonable enough to be compelling.
But if you think about the canoe with boulders example, you wouldn’t suddenly notice the water within an inch of the gunwales and say, “We need a bigger boat!” Instead, you’d probably yell, “Who the heck put the big rocks in the boat?”
It’s a management problem, not a money problem.
In the same way, when you weigh too much, you don’t blame your clothes. You don’t stand in front of the mirror and say to your clothes, “It's all your fault. How could you have gotten so small?” Buying bigger clothes doesn't solve the problem of you gaining weight.
We understand that too much weight is a management problem. And we get it, usually without too much confusion, that being fat is not about having too little cloth in the clothes we wear.
Money problems come from spending too much (on the wrong things) and poor planning, just like weight problems come from eating too much (of the wrong things) and poor planning. Both of them are evidence of poor self-management.
Money problems that couples have are also about collaboration as well as personal self-management. It’s tempting to say that “MY management” is healthy, but “YOUR management” is what’s tipping over the boat. The truth is, one partner’s habitual mismanagement has usually been enabled by the other partner. You have to tolerate your partner’s mismanagement for it to continue for long. And most of us end up doing more than tolerate, we cooperate.
Let's face it. Money problems, with rare exception, are a symptom of trying to continue adolescent strategies of frequent indulgence and infrequent responsibility when in reality the real world requires the opposite.
Solving money problems requires leaving adolescent attitudes behind. It requires making emotionally adult decisions, following through on plans like responsible adults do and accepting limits like a mature adult does. You can’t continue irresponsible behavior and solve money problems...
...even if you get a bigger allowance.
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