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for the numbers. Consider making piles: necessities vs wants, big numbers vs small numbers. The goal is to know your expenses. You shuffle and stack paper in whatever manner that has meaning to you.

Tally your total monthly expense. Let's say they total $3500. Then check that against your monthly income. Clearly the take-home pay needs to be over $3500. If it is not, you just failed the litmus test for financial health. And you might be heaving your snowshoes toward a snow-covered crevice, where you fall and injure yourself.

Assuming you are unsatisfied with your findings, you begin building the plan to improve your financial health. The first step is to identify expenses that seem avoidable. That is the QUICKEST way to change the balance sheet of your financial life. Obviously this isn't the answer any person necessarily wants to hear, but that doesn't change the cold, hard truth: how we spend money is something we have a lot of control over. It is often much more difficult to increase the income side of the equation, which takes at least 6 months to change, if not years.

From this kitchen table comes your plan. Your plan might boil down to avoiding restaurants, spending only $x on food for the next 6 months, dropping out of a sewing class, and/or postponing your 25th anniversary vacation. The plan has specific objectives and tasks. You don't leave the table with only a "spirit" of spending less. That will not work.

As you make and finalize your plan, please note that you will need to pull a chair at the kitchen table for any persons who share a roof with you. Have them sit with you so they connect the dots between numbers and their habits, and how they ultimately impact the household's financial health and future opportunities.

(2) Phew~! Wait, there's a part 2? Right - sacrifice. "But I feel like I just sacrificed by going through the very process you outlined above! Isn't the pain over?" Nope. You now have to implement the plan.

For me, I avoid spending money on clothes, jewelry, vacations, cars, and restaurants wherever possible. It's now a part of who I am, and I'm proud not to be an overindulgent American any longer. I will confess: throughout my 20s, I was this other person, someone who thought she was privileged and deserved to own the best clothes, have my nails done, and eat out for lunch every day. Today, that couldn't be further from who I am. I am now someone who is free from the burden of posturing for others, free from carrying the associated expenses, and freer than ever to design life as I like.

What will motivate you to chart that life-saving course to base camp is something you will need to find in your own life. It might be your children, your spouse, or just plain about you - as you are now, or as a child wanting certain idyllic things such as a home or to live in the Alps.

However, let me offer a final caution. Think through your actions. Emotions have a strong hold on each of us, as well they should in most circumstances, but the most successful people are those that are able to recognize their feelings, experience them, and pit them against larger goals in life. For example, is owning a boat a part of what you want your life to be? Riding the waves on a sunny day is fun, but there is a long task list of maintenance tasks for you all throughout the year for that purchase. If being on a boat is important to your well-being, couldn't you rent a boat for a day each year?

The point is, think through the life of any given purchase or transaction.

And, remember, that base camp may be closer to you than you know.

Learn more about this author, T Verhoff.
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