Exploring the cost cave, learning curves, and help

Welcome to the Intentional Dollar weekly newsletter — great work taking this small step to move your money forward. I’m Logan, a Certified Financial Planner™, and I’m excited you’re here!

What’s inside?

• One tool to experiment with

• Two quotes from others

• Three questions to dig deeper

• Four lines of poetry for the point

_{One tool to experiment with:}

The Cost Cave:

Do you know where your money goes each month?

Not just the big ticket items: car, mortgage, insurance — but the day-to-day holes in the bucket. If you frequently have the “where did all my money go?” conversation at month end, it’s time to look inside the cost cave.

The cost cave is the place our expenses hide unexamined. And without going inside and searching around, we’ll never have a solid idea of how our we spend our dollars.

This is an important exercise, but one you don’t need to do each month. There’s an apparent pressure that expense tracking must be a monthly exercise — but that’s not the case. This friction often stops us from tracking altogether.

Most of us fall into unconscious spending patterns because we’re creatures of habit. The $20/week we spend picking up food goes unnoticed. So at month end, we underestimate how much our actual restaurant spend was for the month. By examining a month here and there, we can grab a sufficient sample for our expense audit to see where we divide our dollars.

Why is important to identify these hidden costs?

When you know your true costs, you enable the process to modify them (if necessary) and deploy them elsewhere. Identification creates awareness, awareness creates opportunity.

It’s similar to looking back at your calendar to see your priorities from the week.

If someone were to ask you how last week was, and you quickly utter, “busy!” your time is stuck in a time cave. It’s your calendar that will shed light on the true drivers of your busyness.

So go in with a flashlight and look around. What sticks out? What surprised you from the month?

You can record your expenses in a few ways:

• Pencil & paper

• Spreadsheets

• Apps like EveryDollar

When tracking, be careful to avoid another cost cave, the “Miscellaneous” bucket. When we spend outside of pre-defined categories, it’s tempting to tag spending as miscellaneous. This is really just a small scale version of your current cost cave. Be specific to see your spend.

_{Two quotes on learning curves:}

Knowledge acquisition can be painful and frustrating — this is natural and a sign you’re on the learning curve. It gets easier with reps, and reps stack over time.

_{Three questions on blind spots:}

1. What if I have a few blind spots that are silent anchors to my financial progress?

2. Who knows me well enough to kindly point out these blind spots?

3. What mirrors can I install to help see these better?

Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.

_{Four lines of poetry for the point:}

Contact Me:

Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]