Last night I was out having dinner at a diner-style restaurant with my good friend whom I had seen in quite a while, and when the waitress came by to take our orders I asked if I could order off the kid’s menu. The menu clearly states that it’s only for kids age 10 and younger, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. After all, that kid’s meal had everything I wanted in my breakfast for supper meal anyhow: pancakes, bacon, and eggs.

If I was able to order this off the kid’s menu rather than the “regular” menu, I’d save some money and I wouldn’t be wasting any food. The kid’s meal was only $3.99 vs the $7.50 of the adult version and still had about 80% of the amount of food. The adult version is always too much for me anyway.

To my surprise, the waitress said I could order off the kid’s menu!

What does this have to do with personal finance (besides my $3.50 savings)? Well it got me thinking about the portion control problem we have in the United States.

We have a huge problem with portion control in our country, and I don’t just mean with food portions. Our cars, houses, and need for “stuff” has grown out of control. This constant need to acquire more, bigger, and “better” stuff has led to our other portion control problem: debt.

Don’t believe me? Research shows that the total of U.S credit card debt is around $739.1 billion dollars. No, that’s not a type-o, it’s billion with a B. The average credit card debt per household is $15,799.

So what do we do about it? Here is an idea I came up with while I was pondering all these facts.

Stop Buying So Much Stuff

Seriously. It’s that easy. We just need to get our portions under control again. We need to put the credit cards in a block of ice, or cut them up and quit buying stuff we can’t afford. We need to ignore the constant pull of the Jones family next door. We need to move to the country and get a whiff of real life outside of our competitive bubbles.

There’s more to life than going to work to afford the consumer lifestyles most of us have adopted. Instead, we should explore the possibilities of life after financial independence. We need to asses what our life goals truly are and then we need to make sure every decision is in-line with our plan to get there.

Yes, it’s way easier to give this advice on financial portion control than to take it. After all, I thought of all of this while I was dining out, which is not the most frugal decision ever. But at least I did have a frugal and portion-controlled plan for my meal out. Frugality and financial freedom isn’t about never treating yourself to a meal out or enjoying your money. It’s all about portion control!

Do you have a problem with financial portion control? What are you doing to fix it?

Photo courtesy of: Colleen Proppe

Learning Financial Portion Control is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

I’ll bet you have problems.

Major money issues.

Sometimes it’s hard to sleep.

When your credit card gets denied do you smile and tell the clerk, “Oh, I gave you that card? The strip doesn’t work right.” Then do you hand over the next one, hoping that this one has a “good strip?” I’m sure the clerk never realizes that by “good strip” you mean “one with money available.”

Maybe you make a ton of cash, but you’re behind on your taxes. You haven’t paid them in three years and you know, deep down, that it’s only a matter of time until The Man catches up with you.

Worse yet, your problem might be that you just don’t understand all the terminology of investing. Like one of my favorite songs from the band Camera Obscura: “I should be suspended from class, ‘cause I don’t know my elbow from my ass.” Maybe you’re just hoping someone will take control for you.

But this class is your financial life. And it’s not graduate school…this is more like Personal Finance 101. Yet you still don’t know.

Do any of these sound familiar? Are any of these partly the reason why you thought you’d read Add Vodka? Maybe glean a little financial knowledge while Daisy entertains you?

It’s a Good Start.

First, Daisy’s very funny. Second, she owns a good head for money. She can teach without preach. I need to learn that lesson.

Here’s the thing: I was that guy. I didn’t know about money.

Let’s go stronger, Joe: I was clueless.

So, you know what I did about it.

I became your financial advisor.

My Story

…okay, maybe I wasn’t your advisor, but I was an advisor. I managed $60M dollars for clients. I worked with about 180 families at a time, helping them make financial decisions. I was a fee based guy. You paid good money to follow my lead.

–and I didn’t know much about money. I was the guy in the song: I should have been suspended from class. I didn’t know my elbow from my ass.

Then I made a ton of money, and because I was technically self employed, I owed a lot of tax. I was that guy who didn’t pay taxes for three years. That’s because I owed an astronomical sum and hadn’t really planned for that (again, see “I don’t know my elbow….”)

And, because I owed a bunch of money, my credit cards all were in jeopardy of going away. I had that “Oh, I gave you THAT card?” look down to a science. It isn’t polite to let the lady at Target know you’re praying when she swipes your credit card.

You Can Change

I wish you could have gone into client meetings with me. You would see something uncomfortable but also more than a little interesting: you would have seen people financially naked.

I didn’t meet a person who wasn’t a little self conscious in their financial birthday suit.

Everyone had problems.

1)  I worked with a man who had 2.4 million in savings and didn’t know how an IRA worked. He was pretty embarrassed when I showed him that he had an annuity inside his IRA and didn’t need the dual protection. He was wasting over $20k a year in unnecessary fees.

2)  One client had over 30 credit cards and $125k in credit card debt. Her husband had no idea (or so he wanted to believe…but I think in his gut he knew something was amiss). We cut up credit cards for nearly an hour before she stopped pulling more from her purse. They just kept coming and coming….

3)  One guy owned a business that had created a net worth in the range of $40M dollars.  He had to call someone to find out if he had a no fee checking account. He didn’t.

4)  A nice family had severe medical issues for two of their sons. They were busy keeping up with the Jones’ and had no savings. They’d been borrowing money from his retirement plan and now couldn’t pay it back because they had to cover the bills. They owed about $18k in taxes.

5)  MANY people didn’t understand their 401k plan or work benefits package. Disability insurance? “I’ll check what I’ve got at work.”

6)  MOST people didn’t know anything about investing. Zip, zero, nada. And insurance? They’d heard insurance was bad so they really didn’t want to talk about it. Understand it? No. Talk about it? Learn? No.

7)  EVERYONE had embarrassing situations to share. Often I felt like a priest in the confessional. I’d learn to listen and nod. If you think I’m judging the people in the above scenarios, I’m not. How could I?  I was right there with them.

It All Starts With You

We all start from somewhere. I remember waking up one day and deciding that instead of saying “this needs to change” I said “I have to change.” Just a couple words made a powerful difference. I was in control and it was time to take charge.

My situation was bad, sure, but so was everyone else’s! Further, it really didn’t matter if my client had credit card issues or couldn’t understand why an annuity was bad. It was about me.me.me.me.me. Normally I’d call that selfish. This time it was taking control.

Joe’s 5 Steps to Change

I became a change agent. I started working on ME and began thinking about how best to help you. Powerful change required a mindset shift, that, while not as easy as some finance gurus will have you believe, did require only five steps:

1)  Take control.Make a decision and stick to it. Example: I will call an accountant today and figure out my taxes.

2)  Write down everything.  I owned a 529 plan for my kids. I didn’t know how it was invested. I created filing systems for all of my investments. Started using Mint, a budgeting software. I needed a dashboard to quickly look in on my money.

3)  Talk about money. Enter the conversation. I’m amazed by how open the financial community is on Twitter and Facebook. Not the Wall Street crowd. They’re shrouded in technical jargon that (by and large) is irrelevant. I’m talking about the everyday community. Follow people like Daisy, Jeff Rose (Certified Financial Planner), Financial Samurai, or people openly stumbling through it and winning, like Andrea from SoOverDebt. These people are open about money and because they’ve felt the pain of real life before, won’t judge you.

4)  Get comfortable with your financial body. It’s your skin. Be comfortable in it. Own it. Then, just like you would if you were out of shape, begin developing muscle. Read Add Vodka. Stop by lesser blogs, like Average Joe’s Money Blog (shameless plug).

5)  Begin eating the elephant. Whenever I would get freaked out by all the change that needed to happen in my life, I would go back to the old joke: “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time.” By focusing on only the next step, I’d hold off my anxiety and

The meeting with my accountant led to an efile of back taxes. That led to a letter and visit from the IRS (Ever had an IRS visit? Even when you’re pretty sure it’s coming it’s still more than a little intimidating.) That opened a discussion on paying my taxes, which was the first step to catching up. One nerve-wracking bite at a time. To get there, I just had to take a first step.

Now it’s your turn. Take the first bite.

Do you have money problems?

Money Problems? Jump On Board is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

When companies have takeovers or re-organizations, when your job changes or there are new people in them, it sends many people into a panic.

People decide to retire early in the face of work change; others consider finding another job. There are a few that seem excited about the change in a positive way.

But there seems to be a pattern of a lack of change management initiatives to help ease those more resistant people into the change when companies go through a big change. Perhaps there would have been less panic if some initiatives were set forward to help some of the employees with the redesign.

I’ve studied in various courses throughout my education the theory and science of change management, and  employing these methods have helped me embrace and become excited about the change.

Ask Questions

Perhaps this is naive, but people who design changes and who implement them are typically high up in an organization and know what they are doing.

They are professionals. They’re all educated, experienced, and the process was analyzed, tested, and reviewed by many members of the organization.

It’s important to trust that people know what htey are doing, but it’s still hard to completely accept something if you have a bunch of questions floating around.

Ask them! The organizers of the change are more likely to be relieved that there is conversation about the change, than angry at the questions. Ask the right people, and you’ll get answers. Maybe the answers will help you understand why the change had to take place, which is the first step to accepting it.

Identify Opportunities

I find that the people who get excited about change are those who could identify opportunities for themselves within the message.

At the end of the day, there should be opportunity for everyone within a change. Even if the only opportunity that you can pull from a change is the ability to adapt to it and learn from it, that’s great. Especially for when you go to further your career.

Confront Your Scepticism

Self awareness is key to accepting change. If you do not know that you’re bristling at the thought of it, how will you be able to fix your attitude?

If you start to panic, think about whether or not you’re resisting the change. Be truthful to yourself.

Find Your Position

Once you’ve accepted the fact that you are resisting the change (you probably are), figure out why. What’s behind your resistance? Be honest with yourself.

Many people are scared that they won’t be able to adapt to the new, additional duties added to our roles. For instance, I knew somebody who was scared to have a new technology added to the organization. She was in her early 60’s. She’s lamented before that she has a hard time learning the new systems that were provided to help with the position, and she refuses to use a couple of them because they didn’t provide us adequate training for those systems.

Underneath everything we do outwardly, there is something underlying. This is our “position”. When dealing with conflict, a person is supposed to be moved off of his or her position. Until we know what our position is, we can’t properly deal with our resistance. Find the driving factor to your resistance.

Once you’ve found it, confront it.

Do you struggle with accepting change? What methods have you used to help yourself or others accept change?

How to Step Up to Change – Coping Mechanisms For Those Who Are Resistant is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.