Stop Losing Money: The Real Cost of Procrastinating with Your Finances

Are you struggling with financial procrastination? In this episode, we break down why financial procrastination is so common, how it quietly sabotages your wealth, and what you can do to overcome it. Learn simple, proven strategies to beat financial procrastination and start building real financial momentum today.

Chapters🕓
00:00 - Intro
00:47 - Why We Procrastinate with Money
01:20 - Overwhelm, Perfectionism, and Fear
03:29 - The Real Cost: Lost Time and Missed Growth
04:38 - How to Break the Cycle: Step One—Acknowledge Where You Are
05:36 - Step Two: Get Organized and Assess Your Finances
06:13 - Step Three: Start Small and Set Realistic Goals
06:34 - The Power of Automation
07:53 - Addressing Root Causes and Getting Help
08:50 - You’re Not Alone—Take Action Today

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Transcript

>> Wes Cuprill: 0:00

Hi there. I'm certified financial planner weapril, and this is Wealthwise Women, the show that's rewriting the narrative that personal finance and investing are just for men and just for insiders. Because whether or not the rest of my industry realizes it, the future of wealth in the United States is female. And I aim to foster that future one episode at a time. So join me as I attempt to add humor and entertainment to the otherwise snoozefest that is personal finance, addressing along the way various topics from the lens of how they affect women in particular. And if you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to our channel and our newsletter. The link to which you can find in the episode details that being said, let's get to this week's episode hello there, and welcome to another episode of the Wealthwise We Women podcast. What I want to talk about is the topic of procrastination, specifically financial procrastination. Because if it doesn't affect everyone, it at least affects, I think, a large majority of us. And it also fits in that overarch theme of investor psychology, talking about just psychology in general. And it also fits into that theme of the more we talk about a lot of the issues that people face when it comes to money, the less taboo the subject becomes. And throughout this episode, I'm probably going to be very open and vulnerable with you, at least when it comes to my own experiences with these things, because I think that's helpful. If one person is vulnerable about their experience in their journey, I think it helps others learn from it and also realize that they aren't alone if they're experiencing the same fears or anxieties. But first, let's talk about why people experience financial procrastination, at least in my own experiences. Typically, when I'm procrastinating on something, the thing itself isn't what's causing me to pause or have anxiety or anything. I'm usually anxious or feeling out of sorts about something else, something deeper. So while I might think I'm just trying to avoid the task at hand, it's usually something else that's gnawing at me. I need to go a little bit deeper to really understand what that is. But overall, anxiety and depression are something that play a lot into why we procrastinate, and it prevents us from getting started with the tasks at hand. Another contributing factor is feeling overwhelmed can be very easy when your to do list starts building and building and all of a sudden you think, there's no way I'm going to be able to complete all of this. So you just stop completing any of the tasks at hand instead of breaking them up and at least trying to chip away at it over time. This is kind of similar to a kind of visualization analogy that I heard that always stuck with me. Let's say you dropped somebody in the middle of the ocean or a very big lake and they swim in any one direction they're going to find lands but they can't see that over the horizon. And typically what happens is if you can't see land and you don't know that it's in all directions, you end up sitting there and get decision paralysis about which way should I go? I don't necessarily want to go the wrong way because what if I'm swimming in that direction and I don't find. So rather than just startarting out in one direction, adjusting as you go, we end up doing nothing at all. And I think that's important to remember that if you are feeling overwhelmed, just get started on something, just move at least in one direction and start chipping away at it. Eventually it will begin to snowball and you'll get more and more done over time and eventually the overall to do list will be completed. I think another thing is fear of failure or doing things wrong is also something that contributes to procrastination. I think that's especially prevalent with the younger generations like mine. We have this kind of perfectionism in our head and we get this idea that we don't want to start on something until we have all of the different variables considered and we want everything to be perfect instead. Whats often happens is again, we end up not moving forward with anything because we have this huge fear of failure. What we fail to remember is that one, the mistakes that you can make along the way are great for learning and we need to celebrate the learnings along the way. Even if we ultimately fail in trying to achieve our goal, on top of that we often have this fear that if we do fail, our failure is going to be whatever it is that we imagine it to be. It is never the case. Our failure is never as bad as the worst case scenario that we imagine it to be. And then ultimately too if we fail to achieve the goal that we set out, we may actually end up achieving something though there might be something that comes out of a greater failure, but there's little wins along the way. But again, this is just the whys behind why we procrastinate. Especially when it comes to financial decisions. Anxiety, depression, feeling overwhelmed, fear of failure. There's a whole lot that goes into it. Heck, I think that's why psychiatry and therapy are a huge industry and there will always be demand for it because I think it's helpful to talk through things with people. And humans are always going to experience these emotions. But when it comes to financial procrastination, there are many dangers behind it. But there's one big one. Ultimately, financial fatigue and lack of clarity can set in if you have, if you've failed to move forward on any of your financial goals because all of a sudden you feel overwhelmed by this long to do list that has built up over time. But the biggest danger behind financial procrastination is losing out on time. Albert Einstein is often credited with the, quote that compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world. What he means by that is that interest earns interest on itself over time. And so if you're earning interest, your money is going to grow at an exponential rate. But we only achieve that exponential rate if we're in the market for a very long time. If we start missing out on certain years, then that can reduce our overall return over time. Now there's many different examples that I could show, but I encourage you to even look at it yourself. Just go to hucalc.org do what you can find. There is a comparison of compound in and just playing around with it, I did a starting balance of $100,000. Said that one person starts contributing $10,000 a year now for the next 20 years, whereas the other person doesn't start contributing until 2035 and they start contributing 20,000. So ultimately over 20 years they'll each have contributed the same amount of money. But at the end of those 20 years, the first person has more money, about$110,000 more because they were able to earn compound interest over time. Now ultimately, I think one thing that holds people back is, well, I've already missed out. What's the point in starting now? And it's always important to remember that it's never too late. So I think this gets me to the first point of how do you break out of this financial procrastination? How do you reset your mind and get to moving forward? The first step is acknowledging where you are now. I encourage everybody to do this with blinders on. Unfortunately, in today's world, we live in this comparison society. We're always comparing ourselves to what we're seeing on social media and whatever our friends are talking about. And it's keeping up with the Joneses. But I Think it's gotten exponentially worse when we're constantly bombarded with these messages of, oh, this person's living such a glamorous lifestyle or this person's spending money like crazy. One, we don't know that person's specific circumstances, and two, what does it matter? So ultimately, put the blinders on, quit worrying about everybody else, and then just acknowledge where you are and realize your position is probably a lot better than you realize. And the other thing too is don't beat yourself up. Mistakes have happened, but we cannot go back in time. Ultimately, we can only move forward. So you instead need to say, okay, it is what it is. Hit the reset button. How can I move on from here? And remember, it's never too late to start with something. Step two is to be organized. I think ultimately we have to have a good assessment of all of our expenses, all of our accounts, etc. I talk about this all the time. It's good at least every six months. I do it myself, probably every month. Just sit down and assess where you are financially. Assess what's coming in, what's going out, what your overall net worth is, and then track that over time and get a sense of, am I doing the right things? But when you organize and assess your financial picture, it gives you far more clarity, which enables you to move forward with a better sense of where it is that you want to go. That leads to point three, set goals, but start small. So if you haven't really been putting anything away at all, start small. Start with hundred dollars, one hundred a month. I did a comparison here. Starting balance of zero dolars a month over 20 years, that comes out to 141,000 by 2065. So that's a 40 year timef frme at 6%. And you only contribute $1,200 for 20 years. So you stop after 20, you'll have $140,000 when that's all said and done. And that is almost$100,000 more than the person who didn't start investing until 2035 and at the same time started investing $1,200 year. Sit down and grow your goals to be bigger and bigger over time. But it's important not to say, oh, I have nothing put away. I want a million dollars in five years. It's probably not realistic. Ultimately, what you need to do is go, okay, what can I achieve? And start setting out to achieve that now. One thing that's, I think, very, very important for the psychological aspect of this and to help, kind of help us Take control by giving up control, paradoxically speaking, is to automate as much of this as possible. It's why when company set up 401k accounts, you get that withdrawal, you don't even see it, it doesn't even hit your account. And in fact it's not even shown in your account how much you lost or how much was pulled out to go into your 401k. You can obviously see that in the statements. But it's important to, I think when you're paid, pay yourself first, don't worry about debts, nothing like that. Let's say you make$10,000 before taxes, put $1,000 or whatever it might be into your 401k. So pay yourself first, set up all of those automations. And then one thing I started doing as well is set up an automation within your savings accounts. So even after your check hits, put some extra money away to achieve maybe a larger emergency savings account. But automate it so that as soon as your check hits, you automatically withdraw money and put it in your savings account. And then you mentally say, this is money that I don't touch. But we can help ourselves by automating it as much as possible, but by taking away control from ourselves, paying ourselves first and going, I don't even see the money, so I can't spend it if I don't know that I haven't. It's kind of just a little mental trick that you can employ along the way. Another thing that helps is don't look at your balances frequently. I know that can sound, I think, a little bit silly coming from me, but I think ultimately if we have anxiety about what direction our money is going to go, looking at it every day, especially if you don't need it, doesn't really serve much of a purpose except give you anxiety. Sure we like it when it's growing, but in downtime it can be easy to all of a sudden feel panic. If you're just trying to achieve growth over time, check in on them, every now and then. But ultimately you're not going to see huge growth in just a short period of time. We have to remember that this is a long game and as long as we are regularly putting money away over time, we will see huge growth in the long term. And then the last point here in terms of how to break out of all of this is to address the root causes of your anxieties. Address the root causes of any?ulsivities that you have or any out of control spending. And this is where I think it's very, very important to seek out professional guidance now. I've sought it out myself in the past when dealing with anxieties. I've met with therapists before. I've met with experts and really talked about any mental issues that I'm having, any mental health problems that I'd like to address. And ultimately it has helped in the long term. But I think when it comes to the root causes of financial procrastination, it can be very, very helpful to talk with an expert who can help you really get down to the root cause of what it is that's holding you back. And a therapist can absolutely help with that, especially a financial therapist. And then certified financial planners like myself are becoming more and m more specialized in helping people with the emotional aspect of money, helping them really uncover what it is that is a problem for you and holding you back from achieving your financial goals and then helping you manage those emotions over time, if not overcome them. At the very least manage them to allow you to achieve financial security in the long term. If that's something that you're looking for, please don't hesitate to reach out. Go to visitwith mc.com book a day and time that works best for you and we can sit down and discuss how we might be able to help you. But overall, I hope this episode was helpful. I think it's important to realize that if procrastination, especially financial procrastination, is something that you suffer from, you are not the only one. Plenty of us suffer from the same thing. But it doesn't hurt to just get started today. Start small and you can overcome it over time, especially if you employ the assistance of experts out there. So that being said, I'll see you next week.