Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Personal Wealth, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on Oct 5 - 11, 2015.

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Ong Shi Jie (CJ) is head of integrated marketing and analytics at OCBC Bank (M) Bhd

 

IF YOU are anything like me, you would understand what I mean when I say I hate chores. I love a clean house, but I really, and I mean REALLY, dislike house cleaning. I would love to embrace my domestic side, but I cringe at the thought of oily dishes piling up in the sink, a pile of unironed clothes, sheets that need to be changed … you get my drift. As the problem mounts, so does the dread, which then leads to the procrastination, which then leads to a bigger mountain. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Anyone at all?

But what is it that we fear? When I break the tasks down, I don’t fear clearing the magazines and reading materials off the coffee table. Nor do I fear putting away the kid’s toys. Secretly, I love cleaning toilets. But to clean toilets, vacuum, mop the floor and put a sheen on the windows all in one day? It is just too much! 

When I dissect this, I realise my phobia emerges from a combination of the various individual actions that on their own seem pretty dread-free. It feels overwhelming that we have to do so much with the end objective of a house that is clean. Is it possible to break the paralysis of fear by shrinking the end goal? Maybe it is not necessary to have a house that is sparkling clean. Maybe a house that is just cleaner.  

It is this trick that gave birth to a self-help tip called the “5-minute Room Rescue” developed by Marla Cilley, a home organising guru, which she shared in her book, Switch. Here, she offers advice on how to change things when change is hard. Her tip is to get a timer and set it for five minutes. Go to the worst room in your house and as the timer starts counting down, start cleaning. And when the timer stops, so do you. It is not much. Just five minutes. But the secret I discovered was this: the problem for most of us is getting started. That is the hardest part. Once you get started, chances are, you won’t stop at five minutes. 

It was with great interest that I read on in this chapter of the book on how to tackle debt. Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey had a financial near-death experience. In his twenties, with assets of US$4 million, he lost it all over a period of three years. With two young children, he and his wife were bankrupt. It is with this experience behind him that he developed a very controversial debt-fighting technique — Debt Snowball. This technique involves listing down all your debts and then arranging them from smallest to largest. Next, make only the minimum payments on every debt. After the minimum payments are covered, every available dollar after that will go towards your smallest debt. 

So what’s the controversy? Notice how he didn’t advocate paying the highest interest debt first. He recommended going after the smallest one. This could be an outstanding electricity bill. As you could pay it off relatively quickly, you could then work towards paying off the next smallest debt. This might make every financial planner shriek in horror, but notice how Ramsey has tackled this financial issue as a psychological challenge and not a mathematical one. 

Ramsey goes on to describe it this way: “I have learned that the math does need to work, but sometimes motivation is more important than the math. This is one of those times.” 

People get into financial problems because they lose control of their finances. Anyone who has come up against a mountain of debt will understand the feeling of despair and helplessness. Ramsey argues that someone in this situation can’t be convinced by the math of it all. You need quick wins to show that you can take control. 

What he has effectively done is shrink the change, make the change small enough to be able to chalk up a victory. Just like the “5-minute Room Rescue”, this strategy really can be applied to so many other things that you dread doing when it comes to your money. 

Sometimes, building a financial plan to meet your financial goal seems like such a hairy audacious goal, especially when a financial planner sits you down and tells you a mind-blowing amount that is a gazillion times what you currently have in your bank account. Immediately, your mind blanks out and you stick your head in the sand, pretending the problem doesn’t exist. 

But can we shrink the problem down? Having problems saving? Can you start with RM10 per month the minute your salary is out? Can you move that a notch up to RM50? How about RM100 after that? 

Looking at reducing your credit card debt? How about a small step like merely trying to use your credit card less? Can you challenge yourself to using it only four times a week instead of all the time? Can you start paying more than the minimum? 

How about starting to invest? Can you start looking at the stock pages? Have you opened a trading account? Have you asked your broker for his list of recommendations?

These small milestones don’t happen naturally. To create the change, no matter how small, you need to plan for them. Can we shrink down what our next step should be? Don’t let the end goal paralyse you. Instead, identify the small milestones to get you started. With small quick successes, what you are doing is engineering hope and confidence. And both are important to the change effort to trigger a positive transformation in behaviour.

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