Regret over past financial decisions can have a powerful hold on you. At 23, you may regret running up $20,000 in credit card debt during college. At 35 you may regret never having gone to college. At 45 you may regret having never started that consulting business you always dreamed of pursing. And at 65, you may regret not having saved more for retirement. Regret, financial or otherwise, can have a powerful hold on your life. For most, the question is not whether you have financial regret. The question is how you harness the power of that regret to make sound financial decisions today that you will not regret tomorrow. Here are some ideas to help you do just that.
1. Stop beating yourself up over past financial mistakes: We all have made stupid financial decisions. Even Warren Buffett has made dumb investments, which he readily admits. We can spend a lot of time and energy lamenting these post decisions, but it will not help us make better decisions today. We need to stop obsessing about the past and focus on the present and future.
It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret—Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time—Mason Cooley
2. Learn from that which you regret: If regret has any positive value, it comes from evaluating the decisions you made that caused the regret. Take out a piece of paper and write down your financial regrets in as much detail as possible. Think about not only regrets from things you did, but regrets from things you chose not to do.
Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience—Victoria Holt
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable—Sidney J. Harris
To regret deeply is to live afresh—Henry David Thoreau
3. It is never too late: Reread the quote from Sidney Harris above. Does it describe any of the financial regrets you wrote down on the piece of paper? In most cases, our most profound regrets come from things we were too scared or busy or distracted to do. Whether it was going into business, going to college, or investing in the stock market, what we chose not to do can be a major source of regret. If you are reading this article, it is not too late. Many go to college during retirement, or start investing in their 50s (or later), or start a business only after retiring from a career. Sometimes we convince ourselves that it is too late to accomplish this or that because it eases the pain of regret. But it is a lie. Believing that it is too late to change may make us feel better, but it also causes us to repeat the same inaction that caused the regret in the first place.
There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you—Carol Matthau
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light—Dylan Thomas
4. Change the bad habits: Many regrets are born out of a lifetime of small, insignificant bad money management decisions. You may have lived for years spending just a little more than you make. But after a lifetime of such living, you find yourself in unimaginable debt, with little or no savings. It wasn’t one big mistake, it was thousands of small financial missteps. If that describes some of the regrets you have written down, changing those bad habits will be much like breaking free from addiction.
People are addicted to eating out. They are addicted to shopping. They are addicted to their gadgets. Of course, nothing is wrong with any of these things if you are properly managing your money. But if you are not, these are some of the thousands of daily, weekly and monthly decisions you make that have added up over a lifetime to create the financial regret you now experience.
As a starting point, wipe your financial slate clean. Put your past financial decisions where they belong, in the past. The question now is what financial decisions are you going to make today. If regret is born out of uncontrollable shopping, put something else in your life to take the place of the shopping. Ask a friend to hold you accountable. Give your spouse your cash and credit cards to hold for you. Do whatever it takes so that tomorrow you will not regret the decisions you make today.
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else—Woody Allen
5. Focus on today and tomorrow, not yesterday: Take another look at that piece of paper that lists all of your financial regrets. That paper represents the past. Take stock of the regrets, and make decisions today so that those regrets do not repeat themselves. And once you have done that, throw the paper away. Make decisions today so that tomorrow you will look back without regret.
When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us—Alexander Graham Bell
Topics: Money ManagementAll saints have a past; all sinners have a future—Warren Buffett
Great post! I am a firm believer that you need to acknowledge your mistakes with your finances, but you are correct, you can’t dwell on them. You have to learn and move forward. Good Stuff!
This was a great post! There is so much turbulence in the market today, and people need peace of mind more than ever. I wanted to offer your readers a link to another blogger who is doing great work. He writes about our ‘childhood money messages’ and how the best approach to stability in today’s market is to resist letting these emotions control our buying/selling habits. It is really fascinating work, and something you should all check out. His name is Spencer Sherman, and you can view his blog at http://www.curemoneymadness.com/blog.