I have to confess something. Lately my self control has been out the window. I’ve been spending too much on things I don’t really need. I have been eating more than I should and am 20 pounds overweight. And you know something that’s just crazy? I’ve found myself having some anxiety about money and my weight. You’d think the anxiety would drive better behavior but it is actually having the opposite effect.
So what am I doing about it? Well, a couple things. We are taking a much more conscious approach to our money. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that our economy is damn near in a free fall. The markets are nervous and frankly I think we are already in a recession. Yeah, I know it takes two consecutive quarters of negative growth but I think we’ll see that soon enough. With all the negative things happening in the economy I’m just hoping we don’t end up seeing worse than a recession. Okay, now you know my frame of mind. I’m just another nervous consumer/saver. We are going to be one of those households that makes it worse by saving more and spending less!
The other thing I’m doing personally is getting the weight under control. I’ve decided to start dropping weight. I’m only down about three pounds but that’s over 10% of the weight I need to lose. I’m using the Weight Watcher approach and am counting all the food I am consuming. I’ve always had the best luck with that. If I find I’m not following it tight enough I may even go join officially and sit in the meetings to force myself to do better.
It’s really kind of amazing how I can have such good control over spending (normally) and not be able to use that same skill set to manage my diet and overall health. You’d think that it would be an easy jump from managing finances successfully to managing your diet. It’s not, at least not for me.
On a completely unrelated note, my wife was officially hired by her company after over a year of being a contract employee. That means matching 401k, vacation, sick leave, holidays and a little more stability. Needless to say we are pretty excited about that!