Reward Yourself for Good Credit Card Habits
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Imagine having a conversation with yourself about your credit cards. Does the tone that comes to mind sound angry? Or upset? Are you being mean to yourself because you know that you aren’t as responsible with your credit cards as you could be? Most people have negative feelings about themselves when it comes to their credit cards. Financial problems related to credit card debt are the cause of self-esteem issues, shame and anxiety. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
When we raise children, we know that we must reward them for their good behavior if we want to end their bad behavior. The same thing is true of ourselves. If the only conversations that we have with ourselves about our credit cards are negative, we’re not going to want to deal with the problems surrounding the situation. If we remember to reward ourselves for the smart credit card choices that we make, we will be more inclined towards having a healthy and positive relationship with our credit cards (and ourselves)!
So how do you reward yourself for good credit card habits? The first thing that you need to do is sit down and make a list of all of the things about your credit card use that you don’t like. You always pay bills late. You have credit cards that have high interest. Whatever it is, write it down. Then set a measurable goal to achieve in order to solve each problem. For example, you will write down that you want to pay your bills on time. To measure this, you’ll add that you’re going to pay each credit card bill on time every month for the next three months.
Once you’ve set these goals, you can put some rewards down in your mind that you want to give yourself for achieving these goals. Perhaps you want a spa day. Maybe you’ve always wanted to go to the opera. It might be as simple as taking a sick day off of work just for yourself. (Remember that you don’t have to spend money to reward yourself.) You should write these down so that you can see them on a regular basis in order to keep you on track with your goals.
Choose one credit card finance goal at a time to work on. Whenever you are tempted to backtrack on that goal, focus on the rewards that you have in mind. This should assist you in making sure that your goals are met. As the rewards start to add up, you’ll find yourself developing financial habits that you can be proud of. Then you won’t have to fear those credit card conversations with yourself anymore!
