Stop beating yourself up about your ‘money mistakes’
If you carry on hating on yourself for the mistakes you have made in the past, then you will get nowhere.
This can be applied to every stage of life: money, relationships, friendships, career choices, EVERYTHING!
People make mistakes all the time. We are only human.
Alright, you may have spent too much last year… Maybe you didn’t put anything into your savings when you had set yourself a goal to reach £5,000 or maybe you racked up a huge credit card bill.
And this could be for so many reasons… Maybe last year you didn’t realise where you wanted to be financially, maybe you went through a tough break up, or maybe you just went a little bit crazy (oops) .
Sometimes shit happens, life gets in the way, we make big mistakes, we make little mistakes, it is all part of living right?
One of the biggest financial mistakes I made last year was just after I had started my blog. I wrote a blog about my financial journey and how I saved £15,000 (you read about it here).
I was flooded with messages from people like “omg, this is amazing, you are so good with money”… the compliments went to my head and I thought I was invincible with money. So that month I made a big booboo – I didn’t set a budget, I did not track my spending, I gave myself a bit more leeway than usual and what happened?
After that one month, I racked up a credit card bill of £1,200. That was all the savings I had put away for the previous 3 months. I felt so angry at myself, like I had essentially wasted 4 months of my life and wasted money because I do not even know where half of that money went!!! BUT then I thought well it ha happened now, I learnt from it and I moved on.
Whatever the mistake, let it go and move on.
The moves you make NOW are the ones that are important.
You cannot change the past, unless you have a time-machine but we all know how it ends when you mess with time-travel, so you need to learn from the past.
Learn from those mistakes and make a promise to yourself you will make better financial decisions in the future. Starting now!
If you stay stuck in a mindset of being angry at yourself or upset about the situation you are in, you will stay stuck financially. Also probably be super sad. And probably ironically end up spending more money because your overall attitude will be ‘what is the point?’. A vicious cycle.
It is what it is, you’ve done what you’ve done and there is no point beating yourself up about it.
Right now you are making the choice to do something about.
That is all that matters.
The only way is up baby!!!
Happy saving!
Laura xx
