Stressed? Deal With Real.

MTYL Memo #11: Simple advice for simplifying your money (and time).

Some advice for simplifying as you make your spending plans: When in doubt, underestimate your income, and overestimate your spending. Actually, do that even when you’re not in doubt.

Especially that last one—overestimating your spending. It’s a total game-changer.

Too often, we do the exact opposite. We anticipate a raise or a bonus or extra side income.

And we think we spend less than we do on things like vacations, gifts, clothes, streaming services, and eating out.

And we forget about annual and biannual expenses. When they hit, they feel like an emergency.

Ask me how I know. I detail this super fun, long chapter of my life in Dear Fellow Spender ;-)

Basically, we squish our “spending box” into our current “income box” and it magically works—until it doesn’t.

When you underestimate your income and overestimate your spending, you come much closer to approximating what’s real.

And when have more realistic numbers you make better plans. Better plans lead to happier money results. And happier money results lead to happier life results.

Bonus tip: it can work wonders for time management as well. Underestimate the amount of time you have available to work on something, and overestimate how long things will take. If you guess wrong, you set yourself up for happy surprises—with time, and money.

P.S. I help people with this stuff. Get in touch if you could use help getting your money organized—so you can stress less and do more about those dreams of yours.

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