Avoid These Behaviors When it Comes to Your Money

Recognizing you have a problem when it comes to your finances isn’t that difficult. After all, you have multiple people telling you you’re in money trouble. You’ll receive overdue notices, bank overdraft fees and plenty of credit card denials. However, even after people realize they have a problem they often fail to address it. Below are seven examples of counterproductive behaviors people should avoid when fixing their financial problems:

Procrastination – When you delay paying off your debt, you’re only making things worse because you continue to accrue interest. You need to be proactive in dealing with money issues.

False progress – This includes performing actions that seem to be addressing the problem, but in the grand scheme of things, don’t make any difference in getting your finances back on track.

The “my turn” approach – When spouses take turns rewarding themselves with expensive purchases they only dig themselves deeper into debt.

Hiding the problem – The problem will never be resolved if you don’t own up to the severity of it.

Misplaced anger – Getting upset with the credit card company won’t do you any good, especially if the late fees and increased interest rates are a result of your poor payment history.

Skillful juggling – Transferring balances from one credit card to another to avoid interest fees won’t get you anywhere. Essentially, you’re just making lateral movements and hurting your credit score by opening multiple accounts.

Waiting to be forced – By this point, your credit is probably so damaged that borrowing is either more expensive or unavailable, making the problem much harder to fix.

To learn more about how to get your budget under control, visit Fox Business.