I’ve been walking you through the stages of change, or the stages that mark your readiness to transform a habit. This week, I introduce stage three, which is called preparation. It is when a person intends to take action soon, but she needs to get all of her ducks in a row and to make [...]

Last week, I described how you can get stuck in the second stage of change (contemplation). In this stage, you can think of multiple reasons why you should change a given money habit. But you can also think of multiple reasons why you don’t want to. Procrastination and feelings of ambivalence are common. What do [...]

This post is the third in a series examining the “stages of change,” or the stages that mark your readiness to transform a habit. Last week, I presented the first stage of change (precontemplation). This week, I introduce stage two, which is called contemplation. It is when a person feels strongly pulled in two different [...]

Ready to work on a money goal? When you’ve designed your goal, write it down. We are more likely to achieve written goals than unwritten ones. The findings of neuroscience support this claim. Brain researchers have discovered that neurogenesis (the birth of brain cells, or neurons) continues throughout life. They have also discovered that neurons [...]

Whenever I begin a new personal change group at work, there is a long pause when group members ponder what unique goal they would like to set for themselves. Last week, one of the group participants gave voice to her hesitation: “It just seems like so much. Like it’s easier to not even start the [...]

Researchers have long known that we are more likely to change a habit when we define a specific goal (like “increase the amount of money in my savings”) rather than a vague direction (“get better at money management”). Beyond that, researchers have now shown us that if we can attach specific and meaningful labels or [...]

Aristotle knew a thing or two about the philosophy of “fake it ‘til you make it.” In his day, though, he didn’t call it that. Instead, he explained that we become virtuous by first putting virtues into action, we become disciplined by first exercising good self-control, and we become courageous by first performing acts of [...]

Research by Oettingen (European Review of Social Psychology, 2012) suggests that if we’re working on building a healthy new habit, we might benefit from the “WOOP” exercise. Although it sounds like a fancy new dance step, it’s really just a quick mental strategy that helps you to predict what problems might get in your way [...]

When we’re trying to change a difficult financial behavior, the obvious question we ask ourselves is: “What is getting in the way of doing the right thing?” This helps us to identify barriers and obstacles and to design ways of getting around them. What we often forget, though, is another important question: “What is allowing the [...]

Sometimes I think I should be writing a food blog instead of a personal finance blog, especially given the number of food entries I have posted (see grits, chocolate cake, marshmallows, soup, and lomi lomi salmon). Today, I focus on stew. Not the Irish beef stew or the vegetable stew, but the kind of stew where [...]