Provider Insights: Financially Stuck?

Although Provider is the most easily defined Sigma Role, it can be the most challenging to implement. Understanding your responsibility to provide for your family’s basic needs is much easier than actually doing it. Often, many choices made early in life have long-reaching affects on your career and finances. Fortunately, as bleak as your current prospects look, improving your financial status is always an achievable goal.

Jason Hull, a Fort Worth–based financial planner and personal finance blogger, shared his expertise in an excellent Unstuck post to this week.

A few of the highlights:

THE 3 BIG FINANCIAL STUCK MOMENTS

1. Debt: I can’t deal with my debts. I feel overwhelmed whenever I start thinking about it, so I end up doing nothing.

What to do: Stop doing what it is that’s getting you into debt in the first place. You’re not going to pay it all off tomorrow. Set your expectations realistically.

• Start modestly
• Get an accountability buddy
• Build a competition with that buddy
• Create little milestones

2. Overspending: I don’t have anything leftover from my paycheck at the end of the month. I know I’m overextended, but I can’t seem to resist the online flash sales. I’m saving money in the long run, right? 

What to do: Stop defining happiness in terms of what you have versus what you are. Spend time doing little things that create a sense of fulfillment, enrichment, and purpose.

• Dial down your lifestyle
• Reduce your spending baseline, bit by bit
• Put away the plastic
• Question your purchases

3. Taxes: I haven’t paid my taxes, and I just got hit with penalties, which is going to make it even harder to clear up.

What to do: Make it a project. Break it into subtasks.

• Work with the IRS
• Use an anti-motivation strategy (e.g. commit to doing something you dislike if you don’t file on time)
• Spread out the pain (e.g. setting deadlines for different sections)

With Jason’s help, Unstuck created a simple worksheet to help you prioritize what’s important to you and plan your spending accordingly. I wholeheartedly recommend it as a great starting point as you work to strengthen the Sigma Role of Provider.

You can read the complete Unstuck article here.

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Dr. John Alexander is relationship expert and the author of The Sigma Male: What Women Really Want. To learn more about Sigma Coaching, visit his website, subscribe to his blog, “like” his page on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter.