I’ve been thinking a little bit lately about how easy it is to get derailed from our goals.
Personal finance aside, I’ve been doing a little better about going to the gym this month. 90% of the time if I go between the hours of 11:30-3:30, the pool is pretty empty.
10% of the time, it’s packed. And I am not swimming in it. The first few times this happened, I had my suit on and I would go sit in the hot tub for 15 minutes, staring down the people swimming (or more often just walking) in the pool, waiting for a lane to open up.
None would, so my workout plans for the day would be derailed. Honestly, they were already partially derailed when I walked into the gym and the pool was full. I actually like swimming, but the entire process of getting myself to the gym and into the pool is like pulling teeth.
After this happened a few times, I started packing clothes to be able to run on the treadmill too and switched to using my Couch to 5K app again when the pool is too full.
Fitness Achievement Unlocked for the day. No matter what’s happening in the pool.
There are so many things that can just derail our goals.
Back to personal finance, here are two things that derailed me in the last year.
LAST summer (for pete’s sake), I tried to set up my Health Savings Account so it could be an investment account too.
I can sign and roll my eyes and be irritated over some antiquated requirements to do this, or I could just shut up and do them, right?
I had to print out a paper and physically mail it in – derailment number one. The printer I use is in my parent’s basement. And it jams often.
Honestly, in the grand scheme of how often I am derailed by requiring physical documents be printed, I should really just go to Staples and buy my own cheap printer.
BUT ANYWAY.
That took me like a week, but I finally got it done.
When they bank emailed me their reply and log in info to set up the investment side of the account, I was a little busy and by the time I sat down to do it, the log in info had expired.
I sent a few secure messages back and forth and still did not manage to get the thing set up.
Fast forward A FULL YEAR and one day I decided, eff it, I can’t just do this online. I’m going to have to pick up a phone. Less than 30 minutes later I was totally set up, my funds were transferred over, and I was on my way to much higher earnings that with just the savings account half of the HSA.
I lost out on a full year of interest on a few thousand dollars because I couldn’t get it together and make a 30 minute phone call.
That plan was derailed for quite a while there.
More recently I got a little derailed trying to set up a Solo 401K – again, antiquated systems to set it up, but the thing that really got me was that I needed to list any EINs I’ve ever used.
brokeGIRLrich has an EIN for something I did years ago and then never used again. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I had to call the IRS. This derailed me for several days.
Once I had the EIN, I had to print a physical paper to mail in and get a new EIN for my Solo 401K. Again, several days derailment.
I am currently waiting for the new EIN to arrive via snail mail, but the odds of my Solo 401K being set up by end of year are a little questionable because there are just so many gosh darn steps that might derail me.
Have you ever seen the illustration about the spoon theory? We all have a certain number of spoons every day to use (and for some folks it’s very limited)?
I’m lucky that I’m healthy, but honestly, even as a healthy person, I feel this spoon life. I mean sometimes anxiety can knock out some of my spoons and grief sure as heck can be represented with a similar spoon process.
I sort of think even among healthy society, we’re not as good with our spoons as we used to be. When did it get so hard to use the dang spoons? My grandma and my mom managed to get through every day using, apparently, a shit ton of spoons, without ever seeming to hesitate.
Personally, part of my issue with some of these “spoon tasks” can be losing track of them, or not breaking them down properly. For me, human interaction is a major spoon task sometimes.
Also just getting started sometimes seems to take Herculean strength, though the tasks themselves are not so bad.
I love a good to do list, which does wonders. I finally got the HSA and the first few steps to a Solo 401K off and running by putting them on a to do list. I love the cathartic feeling of crossing stuff off a list.
I also play this mental game with myself and say, “the path to financial success is through these things. Honestly, Mel, are you going to jeopardize your future over printing a piece of paper or making a phone call?”
It’s amazing how the mental spoons of some of those actions can just get to be too much. I think it’s one of the secrets to financial success – it’s that it’s not a secret. I just sucked it up and filled out papers for 12 hours straight once. It was terrible. But now it’s mostly automated.
I try to remind myself of that too! There have been a lot of other financial spoon and goal derailments in my past. When I eventually plow through them, they are never as hard as that initial speed bump moment.
