What’s the one thing in your life you just can’t resist? Maybe a particular food, drink, or candy? A tv show, or even a person? There are some things we are drawn to in an intense way. Like a magnet even. The taste of a food might spark a favorite memory, or a tv show might bring you to another place where you can forget your crazy life for awhile. Mostly, these things are harmless, but what if the urge is uncontrollable to the point that it takes over rational thought? To the extreme that it affects your future in a negative way.

With my extreme personality, you better believe if I want something, I’m annoyingly persistent about getting it. However, I posses a strong inner voice that will pester me when I am clearly making a bad choice. The dialog between stubborn me and my inner voice might go something like this: Me, “OMG I NEED THAT!” Inner Voice, “No you don’t, the one you have is perfectly fine. It might be old and somewhat ghetto, but it still works. Count your blessings. There are lots of people who would love to have your ghetto item. Besides, what kind of message are you sending if you just spend your money willy nilly? You will appear irresponsible. Why don’t you put that money in savings or….”. I think you get the point. Trouble is, the inner voice rarely wins, and then transforms into remorse.

(Side note to those who know me personally: As annoying as I can be to my friends when it comes to convincing them of something, I’m even more annoying to myself.)

Recently, both my husband and I got the urge to buy a new car. Both our cars are 10 or more years old. One has a gianormous dent, and taped up sunroof. The other smells like, for a better word, ass, and is so compact our 11 year old can barely fit in the back seat anymore. We all groan every time we get into either car, and often wonder if parts might just drop off while driving down the road. The trouble is, for the most part, both cars, with over 145,000 miles each, still run perfectly well. Both our trusted mechanics rave about how great they run.

Regardless, we felt it was time to upgrade at least one of them. With our inner voices yelling as loud as they could against our desire, we moved full force into reasoning. My favorite: Let’s sell the compact diesel that gets 45 plus mpg cause it’s worth more.

Let’s move on and get to the point. How we manage our money directly represents our priorities in life. While this appears to be a harsh statement, don’t react until you fully understand where I’m coming from. There is a direct correlation between managing your money based on basic principles and living a life with financial peace of mind. If you are more focused on living in the moment and disregarding your future, then you likely have stress related to financial worries. You may even fight about money with your spouse, or wonder if you’ll be able to pay your utility bills.

The principles my husband and I live by are based on several years of negative life experience, followed by classes we took, then taught, about telling your money where to go, rather than wondering where it went. The methods in these classes were based on instructions from the Bible, and although you may not be a follower of God, these principles work. I won’t go into much detail, but basically: Give, plan, save, invest, and don’t go in to debt.

How does this work? Give the first 10% of your income. To your church, to a charity, to your school, or someone in need. Make a plan for where the remainder of your income will go BEFORE you spend it. Focus on your basic needs first: food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. If you DO have debt, pay those bills after you’ve taken care of your basic needs. If you are debt free, invest your money for the future and have an emergency fund of 3 to 6 months of your basic need expenses. Keep in mind, there are more specific and chronological steps to this, but they aren’t appropriate for a blog post.

The point? My husband and I spent almost 2 years focusing on eliminating our consumer debt. This included car loans, credit cards, and home equity line of credit. In about 18 months time, we paid off over $26,000 in debt and have never looked back. Because we are debt free (except our mortgage), we are able to give, save, and spend without worry. We decide every month where our money is going to go, and adjust when necessary. We pay cash for everything, and can even impulse buy when we know we have the money available.

Did we buy a new to us car? No. Were we close to doing it? Yes. Why did we choose not to? Simply, we were presented with enough road blocks that we finally snapped out of it. Instead we spent some of our savings on fixing our old ghetto Rover and drove it over 3000 miles through California worry free. And we are thrilled with our decision to remain debt free.