When it comes to household finances, my default is aggressive.
When we were spending, we were spending hard.
While we’ve been paying off debt, we’ve been pushing the debt snowball - hard.
Our default setting has been aggressive - we’ve been out there working overtime, second and third jobs, getting set up with side hustles, selling everything that isn’t nailed down.
One of the balance and budgetary issues that we’ve experienced has been a shortcoming on my end - I’m a poor saver. I focus so completely on one element of finances - the attack - the debt snowball - that I forget about the defense - sinking funds for non-monthly expenses, for example.
I can’t see the forest and the trees.
Yes, we need to be gazelle intense in our pursuit of debt freedom. And we need to have a savings account for non-monthly expenses such as car maintenance (brakes, tires, oil changes).
I’ve been listening to The Dichotomy of Leadership by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink and there's an interesting discussion around something like “default aggressive” needing to be balanced by not being reckless.
You should be aggressive in pursuit of your goal of saving your starter emergency fund, paying off your debts and then building your emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses.
You should also have money set aside for oil changes.
We’re learning and living too.
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