How To Ditch the Behavior That’s Breaking Your Financial Plumbing

When you own a house built in 1961, you learn a lot.

Pastel tiles in the bathrooms are quaint. Record players and speakers embedded in the wall paneling are cool. Ditto for hidden wet bars with booze bottle wallpaper.

Vintage plumbing fixtures, not so hip.

Whenever the old-timer plumbers take a gander at my setup, they start reciting a rosary of disasters that could befall from merely looking at the pipes the wrong way. When they kneel before my sinks, they do so with reverence.

The young plumbers, by contrast, ain’t got no respect.

And so they break shit. 

Old timers like Curtis are then dispatched to fix it.

In this case, the latest botched job was a leaky cold water handle and a hot water handle that couldn’t be budged on the bar sink faucet. The young guy nearly decapitated the faucet, maimed the handles, and said it was hopeless – a new faucet was needed.

Curtis, on the other hand, swaggered in, slathered on plumbing lube, plopped on new washers, and found a recycled vintage screw in a truck full of cannibalized parts to get the job done. 

Before heading out, Curtis dropped this bit of wisdom:

“Underuse is just as bad as overuse. For everything,“ he said.

The hot water faucet was frozen from disuse. The cold water faucet was leaking from overuse.

Just like money, I thought.

Where is your money behavior underused? Where is it overused? Extremes of behavior, hypo or hyper, are goldmines of information to fuel financial and personal growth.

Examples of hypo money behavior:

Never reviewing your spending vs. your spending.

Not opening your bills, 401K, or brokerage statements.

Not investing your excess cash.

Never asking for a raise.

Not filing your income tax returns.

Examples of hyper money behavior:

Calculating your net worth all the time.

Combing through your expenses like they’re head lice.

Spending compulsively.

Always trying to get the last nickel in a transaction.

Constantly chasing the best credit cards or interest-rate offers.

Behavioral extremes are symptomatic of beliefs that don’t serve you well.  

Avoidance may have been a winning strategy when you were young, but your money does need you to give a shit about it. Do not confuse neglect for patience.

Hypervigilance may have been key to your survival in the past, but constantly fussing and fretting will cost you money.

Let your money compound politely. 

At least when it comes to equity investing, long-term buy-and-hold strategies have been shown to beat the pants off churn-and-burn trading strategies, which incur high transaction and tax costs, never mind the hubris.

Take a moment to scan your financial ecosystem. 

Use these as compass points: Income, expenses, assets, liabilities, insurance, and estate planning. (If you want specific steps you can take, sign up for my free 30-day email challenge on how to Feng Shui Your Financial House.)

Are there any areas you avoid? Are there any areas you obsess over?

Where do you spend the bulk of your financial monitoring time? Are you trying to minimize taxes? Goose your investment returns? 

How often do you have to put out a financial fire? (e.g., discovering you lack renter’s insurance after your upstairs neighbor’s toilet floods or paying penalties on your late taxes.)

Then take another moment to feel into the motivations.

What underlies those behaviors? What fears are you trying to mollify? What pain are you seeking to soothe? What anger are you trying to pacify?

The goal is financial homeostasis.

I’m shamelessly ripping off this term from physiology and psychology. 

You want your financial ecosystem to function at an optimal level because it’s stable, balanced, and easily reverts to equilibrium.

What can you do less or more of to make your relationship with money more grounded and empowered?

Let me know what you discover, and I’ll be happy to share tips on how to chill out or light a fire under your financial butt.