I was reading an article by Pat Regnier on CNN.com, called “Why saving for your future is so hard”. In the article, he writes that planning for your retirement is difficult because you can’t predict your future situation or how to plan for it.

He backs this up with a lot of science – which I like:

Psychologists, economists and legal scholars often speak of people as having multiple selves. This odd idea helps to explain a lot of our mistakes – we just don’t always know what will make our future selves happy. In fact, we make predictable errors, says Carnegie Mellon University economist George Loewenstein, thanks in part to a mental habit called projection bias. We put too much weight on our current tastes when thinking about our future ones.

This article got me thinking about some aspect of my own life that I have a tendency to try and plan.

I read a lot and some of the books I lately I’ve been reading a few books on Zen and how your mindset shapes your reality. I just started reading a book titled, “Zen and the Art of Happiness” and right off the bat there was a concept that I wanted to share:

“Every event that befalls me is absolutely the best possible event that could occur.”

By this, the author is basically asking you to understand that you cannot plan your life. Things happen, some things you will consider to be “good”, some you will consider to be “bad”. But really, you don’t know what the future holds and how it will shape your life, your beliefs and your opinions of “good” and “bad”.

For instance, I have been writing recently that I expect to lose my job soon. The economy is bad and I feel that my boss – whether deserved or not – is not happy with how I do my job.

Here’s the thing though, I don’t like my job. I don’t like where I’m working or what I am doing. It’s causes stress in my life and relationship. It doesn’t interest me or fulfill me as a person. Why am I still doing it? ‘Cause I make a living from it, I have bills to pay and it’s tough to find other jobs right now. But I would be forced to re-evaluate my career, life, goals if I were to get fired, right? So maybe…

“Every event that befalls me is absolutely the best possible event that could occur.”

Just a thought. With that said, I want to share a few other quotes that I feel are related to this subject (I’m a big quote guy). I wrote these down in my planner a long time ago and randomly came across them today – maybe someone’s trying to tell me something?

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
-Niccolo Machiavelli (don’t be scared…it’s still a good quote)

“It’s never too late to be who you might have been”
– George Eliot

In all the reading I’ve done on personal finance and debt management, there is one rule or suggestion that makes me cringe every time I read it. That rule is simply, “keep track of what you spend”.

There are a few reasons why this is painful to me. One – I’m afraid to know. Two – I don’t want to be that anal about my spending. And three – it takes the fun out of money.

But after some consideration and the release of my holiday binge credit card statement that I mentioned in my last post (final total exceeded $400), I’ve decided that this step is a necessary evil.

My hope really is to keep track as a means of ensuring that I really need something – hopefully impulse purchases will be few and far between if I have to consult the “little black book” each time.

And speaking of impulse purchases, I’m using a former purchase of that nature to follow through with this task. After reading a post on The Simple Dollar, I’ve decided to use my moleskin notebook in a slightly different way.

Each payday I will create a header titled Pay Period month/day – month/day. Each purchase I make – I will write a description and subtract that from my paycheck/checking account balance.

Hopefully, this way, I’ll be able to see where my money goes.