Reading through the comments on last week’s debt discussion reminded me of some children’s discipline challenges I’ve thought about recently. Here are a couple short scenarios to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
#1
In hopes of motivating our three restless little ones to sit still (or at least with with their bums on the pew) and quietly during church, I often offer them an after-church-treat. Sometimes it works well and we have a great excuse to enjoy a little ice cream together after church.
Other times it backfires.
When one of the kiddos is loud or crazy and has to be taken out, that child loses his or her treat. The child knows this and is disappointed (which inevitably adds to the chaos). In addition, the older two kids have realized that once they have lost the chance of a treat, there is no incentive to be good anymore. Bad behavior turns to worse.
#2
A friend recently described the discipline system at the school her children attend. A chart on the classroom wall has a space for each child’s name and a small colored card. All the students start the day with a green card. If a child receives a warning about behavior, the teacher replaces their green card with a yellow card, but there is no other immediate consequence. If a child who already has a yellow card merits further discipline, the yellow card changes to red, and that child misses recess for the day. There is no going back from red to yellow or green. Once a child is downgraded, he stays that way until the next day.
The problem my friend had noted was that once one of her boys got a red card, he had nothing left to try to be good for. What could be more awful than losing recess? The day was already a complete loss, so being ill-tempered about the whole thing, he would spend the rest of the day making himself and everyone around him as miserable as possible.
Do you remember the Mother Goose rhyme:
There was a little girl
And she had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead,
When she was good,
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.
This phenomenon applies not only to kids’ behavior, but to budgeting (and other goals) as well. When you feel like the budget is ruined on the first week of the month because of that expensive car repair (grrr!) it can be easy to want to throw in the towel for the rest of the month and decide to try again next month.
It’s Your Turn
Does this sound like your financial discipline? Do you cycle between very good and very bad at following your budget? Do you find that a moment of weakness or an unexpected expense that breaks a budget category, even if through no fault of your own, ruins your discipline for the rest of the month?
What are your secrets to maintain good “budget behavior”?
I know this is an old post, but I’ve been following your blog the past couple of weeks. (We are new YNABers, too!) Anyway, I think that the binge behavior in a budget is something that honestly takes time because it’s about a perspective shift, changing bad habits, and replacing addictions with contentment. Budgeting, at its core, is about being a disciplined person. One must begin the hard work of asking themselves WHY they are binge spending and usually it has to do with underlying fears and insecurities.
My husband and I started budgeting seriously about 4 years ago, but it was hard. (Before that time, we had a “budget” but we had such a low income it was more frustrating than encouraging to look at our budget regularly and we often put our head in the sand to avoid daily frustration.) We were in that boat where our income was so little we didn’t make ends meet very well, no matter how hard we were working. Any little luxury blew our budget out of the water. Grocery shopping for milk blew our budget out of the water. It was very frustrating. Over the next several years we gained more “free” money in our budget but it still took a long time to figure out how to grocery shop for our family and stay in budget, how to expect the unexpected, how to save for rainy days, etc. My point is, it takes a lot of discipline in patience and learning to become the type of person that isn’t emotionally thrown off by circumstances. I think that it is so encouraging and helpful to read others’ journeys of finances and budgeting and faith building to gain good ideas and tools, but at the end of the day, our lives and our families are unique. I’ve found that the biggest struggle is sticking with it when you are your own best model, and you don’t always have enough background of self-awareness or evaluation to understand your decision making or how you can change it in the early stages. You can’t just look at what another family’s budget is and copy it. You can’t just look at what they spend on a particular monthly expense and follow suit in the exact same way. There are just too many variables.
It isn’t what we want to hear….we want our budget to magically fall into place the first month and get immediate results. But budgeting is ridiculously hard work that takes years to tweak and perfect. That’s why most of us burn out, give up, or spin our wheels. We have definitely had our fair share of these frustrations but the overall goal is to always come back to it and take what we’ve learned and improve on it.
Ok, this has nothing do with budgeting, but just chiming in on the kid behavior thing. Not sure if you were speaking out of your own experience or just rattling off an example, but I’ve encountered the same sort of issues with my own children. Usually it will be a reward at home (like a popsicle or piece of candy) and that way the well-behaving child can still have their reward and it’s quite so mean (like going to an ice cream place and having the other child watch the rest of the family eat ice cream…I agree with you or whoever that that would not be a great option.) Also, I’ve started ADDING small punishments, once the reward is taken away. Adding a little punishment each time seems to help my strong-willed child, and SOMETIMES (if she chooses) she will stop the bad behavior before the little extra punishments get added on. Just thought I would throw this out there.
My 6-year-old is at the point where she “doesn’t care” about any punishments or incentives. When she gets in that mind-set the only thing that works is to snuggle her and love her. I need to start thinking of that sooner (before we go through the big struggle).
I wouldn’t have thought of that…good to know!
LOL, I had forgotten about that little nursery rhyme. 🙂 I think we’re fairly good at being disciplined with our budget behavior. Every once in awhile we’ll go on a junk food spree at Walmart and blow $10 or $15, but I count that as needed psychological motivation. 🙂
Good for you Laurie. Discipline is important (and so is that psychological motivation). I have a big jar with chocolate chips in the cupboard that is my go-to when my kids are being crazy. Those chocolate chips pull me through more often than I’d like to admit 🙂
My mom used to recite that poem to me all the time when I was a little girl. I still say it to this very day because I wear a pixie with a curl.
Anywho, I hate to disappoint myself so I very rarely continue to do so. I have a ton of self-discipline. I think I learned this discipline when I first started going to the gym. Skipping one day doesn’t mean that I get to skip the whole week or I don’t get the results I want. Not everyone (including my husband, in regard to finance) is so disciplined. I feel lucky to be.
How funny that your mom recited that poem! That’s awesome that you have so much self-discipline! I do in certain areas. Financially, I do have a lot of discipline, especially now. I Getting up early or not eating sweets? Another story entirely.
Random note: I was washing my boys’ hair tonight after I read your comment. They’re hair is getting kind of long and I thought, man this is taking more shampoo than usual. I bet your pixie cut really saves on shampoo!
I’ve had hair below my hips to pixie and every stage in between. I’ve donated it three times to locks of love, a charity that uses donated hair for wigs for cancer patients.
Yes I use noticeably less shampoo now than ever before. I actually can’t remember the last time I bought a bottle of shampoo. I know it was before I moved across country (and that was two years ago). The one I have now is economy sized and is about 1/3 full.
I actually figured it out once and even with haircuts every 4-6 weeks this is the cheapest hair style I’ve very had between products, shampoo, and cuts. Plus my hubs LOVES my short hair
This is so true! I budget on a weekly basis at the moment and I find that if I spend big early on in the week, I tend to have a bad week. But if I don’t spend much all week through to the weekend, I treat myself to a take away. I find that if I see something I want I go home and think about if I really need it or what I can use at home for that purpose that I already have.
I guess the trick is to just not let yourself spend early in the week, then you’re set 🙂 It is nice to buy something after having some good thinking time. In many cases that will curb spending binges.