From the course: Personal Finance Tips Weekly

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Get back on track after blowing your budget

Get back on track after blowing your budget

From the course: Personal Finance Tips Weekly

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Get back on track after blowing your budget

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- If you've ever tried to live on a budget, you probably also had the experience of falling off that budget from time to time. Before you despair that you're bad with money, you might want to determine if these slip-ups contain clues for future budgeting success. To find out, ask yourself these three questions. First, what exactly happened? All financial behavior has meaning. And things we consider mistakes contain important information about how we use money to take care of ourselves. What was happening when I made those choices? Who was I with, and what was I doing? What happened right beforehand? If we can identify the triggers that caused us to overspend, we may be able to avoid those circumstances in the future, or account for them in our cash flow plan. Case in point, I often see a phenomenon in my practice that I call a dissociative splurge. When we're spending a lot of energy on self-discipline, something will come along that causes us to slip. Once that slip happens, it's…

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