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When times are tight, it can preoccupy your thinking.
When times are good, its easy to put money woes out of mind.
Pintellos income has beenfeast or famine, while Charlies is a stable salary.
We didnt see this coming, and we ended up maxing out our credit cards.
Now were putting ourselves on a much more rigid plan and a much more realistic plan, she said.
She said this stems from wanting to be reassuring to each other.
I thinkoptimism or dysmorphiais at work.
Neither one of us wants the other one to ever feel worried, threatened, unsafe.
However, I also dont want a 25% credit card rate either.
So theres an in between and I havent always thought that through, she admitted.
Changing Habits
Since theyve hit these harder times, Pintello and her husband are changing their habits.
Theyve stopped viewing their available credit as a pile of money thats available to them, for one.
Theyve also scaled back on their leisure spending, and theyre not fussy about cutting back.
Theyve also begun to work on saying no to each other about spending they are planning to take on.
Pennington sees people fall into overspending habits either through impulse shopping or by making multiple shopping trips.
1 thing you’ve got the option to do to mitigate that is track your spending proactively.
Working hard doesnt mean you deserve an Instagram-worthy vacation if you cant afford it.
People are either misled or dont understand how the investing world works, Singh said.
Go back to the basics of financial management.
Invest in your financial education.
Dont Look For Shortcuts
Another problem Singh sees is people looking for financial shortcuts.
We want things now, faster.
We want to work 10 hours a week and make $500,000 per year.
This is not realistic.
If people stopped taking shortcuts, we could prevent this dysmorphia, he said.
Better yet, dont live your life as though financial issues wont crop up.
Nothing bad is going to happen to us … until it does, Singh said.
In other words, plan for emergencies and unexpected costs so that youre prepared when they happen.
Most importantly, take an honest look at your finances so you could work with what you actually have.
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