Five Ways Laziness is Costing You Money

Managing money well takes a lot of hard work. Don’t let laziness set you back financially.

It’s only an occasional drip, but that leaky faucet is more expensive than you might think. If you let the leak drip on and on for months, that laziness is costing you money.

A few years ago, I noticed  the faucet in our kitchen sink  dripping. I’m not much of a handyman, and I have a bad habit of being lazy about home maintenance. So I didn’t pay it much attention. But a month or two later, I saw that my water bill had almost doubled. Needless to say, I called the plumber to come fix that leaky faucet right away.
A lazy approach to financial management will lead you to wonder what happened to all your money. tweet this!There are a lot leaky faucets in life. These issues seem small, but they cause bigger problems that we realize. If you’re not disciplined about maintaining our financial lives, there’s a good chance your laziness is costing you money.

Just like you can goof off all day and then wonder where the time went, a lazy approach to financial management will lead you to wonder what happened to all your money. Even if you have a good income, financial laziness can affect you more than you realize.

Here are five warning signs that financial laziness is costing you money.

1) Your budget doesn’t balance.

The number one key to success in personal finance is to build a budget and then stick to it. Unfortunately, most people don’t ever create an actual plan for their spending. And many who do eventually get lazy and stop sticking to it.

When you don’t live on a budget, you have no control of where your money goes. You have no way to monitor what you’ve spent in a given month. You may not even know what you can afford to spend. This turns your personal finances into a big guessing game.

If you lose that game, you’ll eventually overdraw your checking account. That brings a lot of expensive and aggravating fees. You might be able to get around some of this by using a credit card, but only for a while. Because your credit card spending will likely cause a second problem: mounting debt.
If you're lazy about your money, you're likely to be in debt your whole life. tweet this!

2) Your debt grows.

Debt is terrible for you in so many ways. It costs you tons of money in interest payments. And it traps you in a spiritual and financial slavery. The more debt you carry, the more restricted your life becomes and the less you can do with your money.

If your budget doesn’t balance, you might use credit cards to support your lifestyle. Credit cards, car payments and other borrowing can keep you comfortable for a while. But as your debts grow, the amount of money  you will pay in interest skyrockets.

The goal of good financial management is to get out of debt, and then never to get back in again. But if you’re lazy about your money, you’re likely to be in debt your whole life.

3) You don’t have enough savings.

Saving money is hard. It requires a lot of discipline to stash money in a bank account instead of spending it. But saving is one of the best ways to buy big-ticket items like cars and houses. And having some savings is critical to help you out of financial emergencies.
Having money saved gives you a lot of buying power and financial peace. But you'll never get there without diligence and discipline. tweet this!If you’re financially lazy, though, you’re not likely to be very successful with savings. Sure, it’s  enough to get loans for things like cars, college and emergency home repairs. But  borrowing money for those things will cost you thousands of dollars in interest payments in the long run.

Having money saved gives you a lot of buying power and financial peace. But you’ll never get there without diligence and discipline.

4) You’re not investing or building wealth.

Working and earning money is a fine way to support yourself through life. But if you want to get ahead and build wealth, you’ll need more than just your income — you need to have some money to invest.

Like savings, investing well requires a high level of discipline. Your retirement plan at work probably requires you to have some money withheld from your paycheck. And if you want to be really successful in investing and building wealth, you’ll have to invest some money on your own, too.

This kind of investing will make you a millionaire by the time you retire if you do it right. But it takes discipline to set aside this money every month. If you’re financially lazy, you’ll probably never invest like you should. And that could cost you millions of dollars in lost opportunity.

5) You’re not giving enough.

Though we are each in charge of handling the money that comes into our lives, our money isn’t our own. In the end, it all belongs to God. And one of the things that He wants us to do is to give that money to help people in need. If you’re financially lazy, though, you’re probably not giving as much as you should.
Giving is one of the most important things we can do with our money. tweet this!Giving money on a regular basis requires having extra money to give. Since financial laziness is costing you money, though, you’re probably not able to give very much. This is tragic, because giving is one of the most important things we can do with our money.

If you don’t give much, you’re missing out on the blessing that come along with giving. We reap what we sow. And if you’re sowing nothing, what are you going to reap in return?

The dripping faucet of your financial laziness might not seem like a big deal right now. But it could ost you a lot of money in the long run. So, what are you going to do to get it fixed?