Recognize Your Needs For Managing Your Debt
Sunday, April 24, 2011, 2:00 AM | Leave Comment
You need to recognize your basic needs in your financial life to manage your debt and eventually live free of debt. Setting and meeting goals play a key role in motivation and fulfilling your needs. In your quest for getting rid of debt and having some financial success, you must overcome your fears and your habit of non-stop shopping. Without recognizing your basic needs and a planned self-motivation program, you risk getting into more debt and a time then comes that you have no choices left but to file for bankruptcy.
Five broad basic needs, first brought to general attention by Abraham Maslow, seem to be the universal motivators of human behavior:
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Biological Needs
Every human has biological requirements of food, shelter and clothing. We all shop for these biological needs. However, many folks go over board, shop for what they think are their needs but in reality these are wants and wishes that they can very easily live without.
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Security Needs
Security has all sorts of types. However, the only true security
comes from your ideas, attitudes, and values. A job, a salary, and a title are only symbols of security. You may have them all and still feel insecure. Or you may lack all of them and still experience security. It is your attitude that counts. When folks feel insecure in their finances, they tend to shop and spend more. -
Social-Acceptance Needs
That’s a huge problem in any society. To show to others that you can be socially accepted, you think you need to buy a bigger home, a bigger car, more expensive clothes, and spending money like anything. The social needs also include the desire to belong to certain groups. However, you don’t have to follow Mr. & Mrs. Jones to be socially accepted and because of the free spending, you get deeper and deeper in debt.
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Self-Acceptance Needs
Self acceptance is about freedom to be debt free. It’s the freedom that you are not a slave to the wants and wishes that we are taught to believe in right from childhood. Once you accept yourself and the way you spend cautiously, only then you would feel meaningful acceptance by others. In the society, the basic reasoning seems to be that acceptance by others proves that you have chosen a worthwhile value system and that your actions are to be trusted. Social acceptance and self-respect are internally motivated. Always work towards your needs for self-acceptance.
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Self-Fulfillment Needs
Self-fulfillment is a quality that made America strong. But over the years and decades, lobbyists and special interest groups have taken over the political and financial life of people resulting in greed and corruption. As a consequence, the struggle to satisfy these more basic drives dilutes and diverts energy from self-fulfillment and leaves this last, but all-important need unsatisfied.
In a Nutshell
When you follow to meet and fulfill any of your needs, make sure you are always within your means. Needs can turn into wishes and that in turn can turn into greed resulting in big spending.
