Late Fees Waste Money

How is late fees wasting money? Late fees are the price paid for being financially irresponsibly.

Sound harsh? Perhaps. But some facts and evident truths are never nice, polite, nor kind; now are they? Math does not lie about what we do and who we are. Why do we pretend otherwise?

Those who put forth extra effort to pay their payments, before the due date, will enjoy the rewards of stress-free living and are not wasting their money on late fees.

Apparently in statistics; most Americans do like to pay late fees. Why? Because the statistics detail a huge problem of money denial by paying late fees.

How many Americans create strategies to prevent paying late fees? How many Americans know how much their late fees are costing them monthly or annually? What is the total cost of their money that is being wasted because of paying late fees?

What do late fees cost Americans?

Facts of late fees totals in America and the bills paid late. More data available at Payscan.com.

•  Late fees had grown from $7 billion in 2000 to $22 Billion in 2004. – What would we do if we had this money in pocket versus paying late fees?
• Grace periods are down from 27.8 days to 20.6 days [in 2004; less today]. – Grace periods exist on most accounts. Do we even know what our grace periods are on the accounts we pay.
• The average late penalty fee is $38.00. – In one year, this one late fee will cost us $456. What could we do with this money, if we weren’t paying late fees? Two late accounts doubles to $912 a year. Math doesn’t lie and neither should our budgets to prove we can’t manage money.
• The bill most likely to be paid late is the utility bill. – This is sad for this utility is a prime necessity. This should be our first bill to pay on time each month, not our last.
• Forty-three percent of people pay their wireless phone bill late. – Why do people pay extra late fees for services they cannot afford or will not pay on time? This is wasting money.

Characteristic facts of those who regularly pay late fees. More data available at Payscan.com.

• Households with children are 75% more likely to miss payments than those without. – This is setting a bad example of managing money to children. Why would we do this? Isn’t leading by example the best way to teach children about responsible management of money?  
• 25% of households pay one bill late each month. 4 in 10 homes have a problem to pay their bills on time. We do have a financial problem in America.
• 32 percent of college students have regularly missed or been late on a payment. – This is the saddest statistic of all. Those who attend college are investing time and money to learn. Do the students have the problem with not managing money wisely or is education failing to teach wise, mature financial management?
• Only 68% of women report paying their bills on time. 3 in 10 women do not pay their bills on time. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and gal pals should be helping one another to responsibly manage money together. Not being careless to live beyond one’s budget to keep up with lifestyles they cannot responsibly afford.
• 28.4 million of households pay at least one bill late per month. 3 in 10 Americans are paying late fees. These statistics are too high and do represent the real financial problems Americans do have. We can complain of our government, unfair late fees, and make a million excuses or blame others of why we fail to manage our money. But the truth is the money and budgets of our homes; is ours to control, spend, and live in the reality of our income. Not the lifestyles, we cannot afford.

This is disturbing information. For the dollars being wasted of paying late fees is money that Americans will not have to spend for other items they need or want.  This represents a financial destructive cycle that many Americans require help with to financially be responsible with their money.

If you are paying late fees, do you know how much each month the late fees are costing? Do you know how much a year, you are paying toward late fees? Most do not even know. Why? Because most live with financial blinders on. These problems of money will not go away. Math and truth solves problems. The more we know about managing money wisely and responsibly; the happier and healthier our homes will be with financial stability.

Is money producing relationship problems in your home, spouse, partner, and children?

Psychology Today teaches us how financial problems produce divorce. If you tend to be a little reckless with your money or a negligent financial planner, it is going to negatively affect your partner and the overall longevity of your relationship.

Wasting money on late fees in home budgets is only one relevant financial problem. This unhealthy routine will produce stress, failed families and homes, and produce ill-effects on health. Mental, emotional, and psychological issues can exist and excel because of the stresses that poor money management techniques do.

There is no shame in seeking help and learning how to stop the unhealthy money issues of our lives. The beauty of a new day is that we have a chance to start over to get it responsibly and maturely right.

Awareness Acknowledges Money Problems to Solve Them

Late Fee Costs Monthly and Yearly

1)      Calculate your monthly bills.

2)      Look at the late fees on the statement. Add the  late fees up separately - as its own bill.

3)      Now, multiply the late fees totals of each month by 12 to get the yearly costs of late fees.

4)      Where is the action plan to stop this wasting of money?

Example:

$1500 Total Monthly Bills

$150 late fees on bills each month.

$150 x 12 = $1800 a year wasted on late fee payments.

Account Interest Produces Monthly and Yearly Waste of Money

Interest on accounts can become large amounts of money wasted, when these accounts are not paid in full monthly.

1)      Calculate together the month credit accounts – as if these accounts are only one bill.

2)      Add up only the interest fees, as if these interest charges were their own bill.

3)      Now, multiply the monthly interest fees by 12 to get the yearly costs of interest fees.

Example:

$1800 Total Monthly Bills

$125 interest fees on bills each month.

$125 x 12 = $1500 a year wasted on interest fee payments.

It is hard to imagine we could be losing $3300 of our income each year because of $1800 in late fees and $1500 on interest fees. Does this even matter? Only you can answer this. Only you can realize your facts and math of your income. Only you can learn to budget the income you have.

Americans are smart people. However, most Americans cannot manage their personal financials. Employers hire many every day to control their financial transactions, without regards; to how well they manage their finances in their personal lives.

Technology is changing the way recruiters hire new employees. Companies use software as their Automated Human Resources. These electronic job applications use Automated Tracking Systems to hire candidates based upon keywords of their information to match the requirements of the job posting.

How long will it be before our credit reports, ability to pay our bills on time, and how we financially manage our personal finances will be considered in the job hiring and job retention processes.

Would you hire a person who wants to earn $50,000 a year salary, if they cannot wisely manage their $25,000 a year income? I think not. If you believe this is far-fetched ideas or worry-less data; then perhaps, you need to seek learning to understand how personal money will reflect on professional money. These two abilities do work together, not separately. Anything less is denial and not money facts.

Work and home life should financially balance one another with integrity, truth, and honesty of financial management. These should never reflect as opposites of one another. When businesses struggle financially this leads to lay-offs and downsizing. When families and homes struggle financially, this leads to divorce and hardships upon children that we can prevent.

As wonderful as it is maybe to manage a billion dollar operation while working; make certain your home financial situation supersedes this. For it is our home lives that we work to produce our best statistics and financial control of; not work.

A job is only a tool to provide money to take care of our homes. But the quality of life we have in our homes, is ours to control. We should seek to learn and apply the best financial management skills we can with the income we have. Knowledge is power and positive changes with money are never easy; but is it the best time investment and money earned we can ever do.

Using Inventory Control to Budget Expenses

Most will read this title and wonder how this has anything to do with a home budget. But what if; this has everything to do with managing a home budget?

Side Effects of Shopping

Psychology Today teaches us a few side effects about our spending habits.

Take a moment to look around your house and you’ll probably find lots of products never used. How many were bought as "necessity" or "need" and end up being trashed? How many hoard products they will never use?

There are five reasons Psychology Today teaches us about our shopping habits. To understand budgeting money; we must first understand what type of shopper we become when we have money in our hands.

Loving Shopping - Enormous amount of pleasure from acquiring something new.

The Loss Aversion Switch - Describes our concern to avoid feeling bad in the future. Add in a discount and we assume it won’t last forever and our focus switches to fear we’ll miss out on a deal.

Twisted Heuristics - Retailers take advantage of this by packaging up products as bulk buys, or they include ‘free’ extras.

The Desire to Save - Many have a desire to save. Retailers and manufacturers play this by telling us money could be saved by buying and using their product.

Rose Tinted Lenses - We routinely delude ourselves.

The list is accurate of how the majority spends money. If we are are not being influenced by marketers and retail industry than we are fighting our own emotional impulses and compulsive desires to put want before need.

How many do a physical count inventory of home items before going shopping? How many make a million little trips to stock the fridge and cabinets instead? How much time, gas, and money is unaccounted and wasted on these trips to the store repeatedly to get toilet paper or soap or other daily need items? What about pet supplies? How much time is wasted in a vehicle to increase cost of gasoline to do these million little trips? How much time and money could be saved and budgeted wisely by having processes to take care of it all?  

Companies use different techniques of Inventory Control Systems. Your Article Library teaches about control that companies use of their inventory and replenish processes. Smriti Chand presents a business language article which could be difficult to understand for those who never experienced inventory control before.  However, this is worth the read to gain insight into how to create a home inventory system; based upon business model, to learn how to control expenses by decreasing the home budget using inventory control and replenishment processes that are effective. If business prosper by decreasing costs using inventory control and replenishment processes; than why don't we do this in our homes to buy needs versus wants responsibly? 

I have known many who use different methods of inventory control and replenishment in their homes. Some budget their inventory monthly, weekly, biweekly, and those who ran out of necessities would only go when they needed it. 

Each method will have flaws, but it is better to have a plan to prevent larger and more costly errors of unfavorable consequences.When unexpected guests show up to your home, the toilet paper may not last as long as having no guests would. It’s the little things to consider for budgeting extra inventory to accommodate guests that will present the biggest issues when creating inventory budget and control.  There will be times of income hardships making it difficult to budget inventory of home needs too. It can be done, even when facing obstacles.

The internet has resourceful and helpful information for those with the slimmest of budgets to those of the wealthiest. The more we model our home budgets as a business budget; the more we stay in control of the controllable and are prepared for the uncontrollable. It takes work to get started and is worth the effort.

Your answers to these below questions will guide you toward creating an inventory action plan. Your preferences of controlling inventory will help you budget wiser and create balance for the supplies and demands of residential replenishment.Investing time to do this will save money.

How to Budget Home Inventory

1. What is the income cycle? Monthly? Weekly? Biweekly? Annually? 
2. What free time can be consistently devoted to inventory shopping? Weekends? Monday? Friday?
3. Can you separate your grocery shopping trips from your household products shopping to create two separate trips? Example: Buy toilet paper/shampoo/soap/cleaning products and materials in one trip. Buy groceries in one trip. By separating both trips, greater focus can be emphasized on each inventory specialty. It will not be so overwhelming to do in one trip either. This mission will help prioritize and save money and time with two trips, instead of one.
4. Can you separate your leisure shopping from your necessities shopping? Leisure shopping and necessity shopping does not work financially mature together. Impulsiveness and responsibility will always fight against one another. Impulsive shopping for luxuries will take over the responsible shopping. This leads to items getting taken off the list to fulfill personal desire before personal need.
5. Can you create a shopping list and buy only the items on this list? Shopping lists do require discipline to focus and control money that is spent.
6. Can you comparison shop items that are cheaper at one store versus another? Store options can be increased when focusing on the purpose of the shopping trip. This will help increase money savings too.

If you focus on grocery replenishment only, you can create menus for the week or the month to help control costs also. By grocery shopping only, you will be able to comparison shop and go to new stores to be able to get the best deal on the items you regularly use. In focusing only on necessity shopping, the same methods can be used and rewards are the same.

Creating a line of travel when composing a store inventory list can help save time and decrease costs. Imagine store A, B, C, and D are ten miles apart and located at different sides of the town. Start at the furthest of distance and work your way back staying in the line of travel. Most rarely consider the gas or transportation costs when buying home necessities and groceries. But we should to control our money.

It is easy to control inventory on the job. Most companies have systems in place that offer checks and balances with replenishment cycles that are cost effective, products to meet supply and demand, and consistency that produces quality service by having items available to customers' needs or wants.

Our homes should always have the necessities in stock before we purchase items for our wants. Money is wisely spent when we calculate our pennies before we consider our dollars. By looking at the ways we can save pennies and time; we will produce more dollars.

Inventory control and replenishment processes can help your home become more functional, organized, and decrease stresses. An action plan works to benefit family members and guests. This new process can be an adjustment period when changing the old ways of doing business at home, but these positive changes are worth any temporary headaches or discomforts by focusing on needs only.

In creating a menu for groceries and buying only the necessities needed, one is less likely to impulsively spend money at the store if an item is not on the list too. We would not go buy a home or vehicle or a large expensive item impulsively. Therefore, we should not take small purchase items so lightly either. The less we are aware to the pennies we spend and how we spend them; the harsher our consequences will become when we have spent our necessity money on items of want, instead of, items of needs.

Family members, employers, or no one else should ever have to pay for the necessities of another; when they waste, spend unwisely; and fail to control their budget responsibly. If a person ask you to borrow toilet paper or a dozen of eggs; ask them where did they spend their money and why do they fail to budget and inventory their money more wisely. Assist them in their need once. Then teach them how to put priorities of their money first, and luxuries second. By teaching others how to do for self through mature budgets , instead of, being their problem solver and personal loan department. Stresses related to money in families and friends will decrease when assisting once and teaching them new skills. They will either listen or move on to others who allow them to spend immaturely and impulsively. No one should ever burden another to be their continual problem solver and financial resource. Helping is one thing, but to constantly enable is to be the source of their problems too. Teaching others how to do for self is the best way to control money. Live with the money you have. Not a lifestyle you cannot afford.

Emotional Denial Decreases Financial Solutions

Can the emotion of denial sabotage our ability to create financial solutions in  home budgets or business budgets? Can emotions deprive our abilities to realize the truths of our money situations? Can denial persuade us to believe a lie about how we spend our money? These answers are yes. How?

Consider the education in our life. What educational awareness did we receive about emotions and the emotion of denial? Could the majority of answers be that we have received no training about our emotions or emotional training about denial? Surprising, huh? Not really. Here's why:

• Emotional awareness is not taught in math curriculum.
• Emotional awareness is not taught in educational courses.
• Emotional awareness of denial is not taught in employee training classes.
• Managers are not skillfully trained in emotions nor taught how to prevent and problem solve the issues that emotional denial creates in a business.
• Emotional education is not taught to individuals of how to maturely and responsibly manage emotions to balance life and control their money. 
• To be aware and to control the emotion of denial requires learning and applying new skills.

 Where is the training offered to the public about emotional awareness and how to stop the damages of denial?

Denial is one of the worst emotions to produce the most harm in our society and to our human race. Why?

1. Denial produces human abuses.
2. Denial produces Domestic Violence.
3. Denial produces Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 
4. Denial produces child abuse.
5. Denial produces victims through harmful addictions.
6. Denial divorces marriages and tears families apart.
7. The lies of denial are appear easier to survive through and to falsely cope with. 

Denial is not reality nor honesty. Denial produces blame or excuses. Denial does not create positive and mature results. Denial creates problems. Denial does not solve problems. Denial will not allow a person to control money.

What is the emotion of denial about?

The theory of denial was first researched by Anna Freud. She classified denial as a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality.

In denial, an individual does not see the existence of truth or fact. The choice to refuse reality is to deny truth and fact. Denial is the refusal to admit or accept a truth.

Psychology Today teaches us that avoiding a negative emotion buys short term gain at the price of long term pain. Emotional avoidance often involves denying the truth--not a good foundation for a healthy life. When accepting the emotion, we are giving self a chance to learn about it, become familiar with it, become skilled in its management, and integrate it into your life. Avoidance doesn't teach that, because we can't learn to do something by not doing it. - Noam Shpancer Ph.D. - Insight Therapy

Can we learn about denial? Yes, we can.
Can we learn what the emotion of denial does in our lives? Yes, we can.
Can we learn how to control denial? Yes, we can.
Do we make excuses or misplace blame elsewhere because we are in fear or are too lazy to learn about what we can maturely control and accept wisely what we cannot control? Yes, we do!

Americans are not stupid people. Each has their unique experiences of mistakes and lessons learned. However, most Americans are not emotionally equipped to acknowledge and understand their emotions. Without understanding how our emotions help us make decisions than we are going along to get along and never controlling anything in our life nor our money.

The ability to manage and control will require skillful learning. These new skills help us to make rational and logical decisions. Through learning, we gain the ability to maturely solve problems and responsibly prevent problems.

We control our money by understanding math. We also need to know how to control our emotions when doing our math too. Denial can be a persuasive salesperson that can manipulate us and affect the choices we make  with our money and in our budgets.

American culture teaches us that our emotions are our primary defenses and offenses to give in life. However, when we fail to seek knowledge about the emotional,rational, and logical functions of our brains; we are deprived of coping maturely and making honest decisions about money.

We will never have positive results if we allow denial to be an equation in financial management. We will never have a home and work life balance by surviving with denial. Denial requires new skills to stop and break the old damages produced by this emotion.


Calculators have no denial buttons. Why? Because emotions are not supposed to be considered when figuring the calculations of math. Math produces truthful answers. We cannot see the physical attributes of denial - as if it were a visual form. But we can witness the damaging and negative results of what denial can do.

Budgets that are created with denial will exceed their limits when reality becomes fact. Reality and truth always reveal the damages of denial. Harmful denial will become proven as a fact when the damaging consequences become evident. Do not be deceived. Debts pile up and credit scores go down. Businesses must go into bankruptcy. Services will be cut off and items repossessed when not managing maturely the necessities versus the wants. A $600 monthly home budget is as important to manage as a Billion Dollar business. Why?

Because denial creates pain to anyone who fails to ignore that denial exists and fails to control denial. Pain of losing homes. Pain of losing jobs. Pain of companies going out of business. Pain of losing what one used to have to what one has to accept now of their reality. Denial produces painful consequences.

Money builds and creates our needs and wants. Money destroys and takes away our needs and wants when we do not learn how to control it. Our emotions do affect how we feel about money. Our emotions do affect how we spend or save our money. Our emotions will impact our home and professional budgets. Stop allowing emotions and the emotion of denial to be the calculator when budgeting money.

It is up to each American to learn how denial affects their life. To know how denial jeopardizes budgets and how to maturely cope with undesirable money consequences.

It has been said, "Many will strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." Many will fake on the job as being  a financial expert while personally at home, they are struggling financially to keep their personal life afloat. Many will complain at the financial resources another appears to have; while they neglect the responsibility and mature budgeting of their home first. Do we continue to socially strain at gnats while struggling to swallow the camels we choose or do we seek learning to become aware of our emotions and stop the effects of denial in our lives? The choice to do or to be is for each to decide and do something about it.

A problem is only as good to be solved as the person who is tired of suffering from it. Are you tired of suffering and struggling financially already? Consider if denial or your emotions are a part of the problem. -

Help is available for free.

• Learn how to make mature budget decisions.

• Learn how to become aware of emotions and how  emotions can help or hurt quality of life.