See, the thing is I try not to be a financial fuckup, and I know how to, intellectually. My downfall is mostly due to two things:
1) Money burns a hole in my account. I spend spend spend until I don't have anymore, and while I generally plan my expenses pretty well and never intentionally spend more than I have (and pretty rarely go over unintentionally), I end up with exactly $0 in savings when something unexpected comes along and bites me in the ass. (Now that I'll have car repairs to deal with, it's even more important that I learn to fix this problem.)
2) As long as I have a monetary cushion I'm pretty good. But when my balance gets low, things tend to get, well, bad. If I don't check my balance every day when it gets low, I can end up with several overdraft fees because an expense I'd forgotten about (usually a check or debit transaction that takes a long time - like a week plus - to clear) goes through and sends me over.
And it's kind of irritating, because both my parents and both of my older siblings were like a gazillion times worse at money management when they were my age, but now they're all "tsk tsk, that Joseph can't handle his money." And I have to bite my tongue from saying, "Look, at least I'm not BOUNCING CHECKS AND PAYING HUNDREDS IN OVERDRAFT FEES EVERY SINGLE MONTH like you did in your 20s" or "at least I'm not blowing my rent money on Magic: the Gathering cards," etc. >_
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1) Money burns a hole in my account. I spend spend spend until I don't have anymore, and while I generally plan my expenses pretty well and never intentionally spend more than I have (and pretty rarely go over unintentionally), I end up with exactly $0 in savings when something unexpected comes along and bites me in the ass. (Now that I'll have car repairs to deal with, it's even more important that I learn to fix this problem.)
2) As long as I have a monetary cushion I'm pretty good. But when my balance gets low, things tend to get, well, bad. If I don't check my balance every day when it gets low, I can end up with several overdraft fees because an expense I'd forgotten about (usually a check or debit transaction that takes a long time - like a week plus - to clear) goes through and sends me over.
And it's kind of irritating, because both my parents and both of my older siblings were like a gazillion times worse at money management when they were my age, but now they're all "tsk tsk, that Joseph can't handle his money." And I have to bite my tongue from saying, "Look, at least I'm not BOUNCING CHECKS AND PAYING HUNDREDS IN OVERDRAFT FEES EVERY SINGLE MONTH like you did in your 20s" or "at least I'm not blowing my rent money on Magic: the Gathering cards," etc. >_