Why Am I Always So Broke?

Posted by Amy White on December 27th, 2018

Being broke kind of sucks! 

I know, it has happened to me multiple times in my life.  8 1/2 years ago when my husband and I got married we had 6,000 in debt.  It literally chocked the life out of us.  It was horrible and all of our spare money went to debt reduction.  

It took us 5 years to get rid of all of our consumer debt.  Three years later, we are down to just over 100,000 left on our house.  

Only having a house payment has completely changed our financial picture and made breathing possible again.

Back then, I knew exactly why I was always broke.  It was because all of my money went towards paying off debt.  

Now, when I feel broke, I have to dig a little bit deeper.  Now when I'm broke it is because I'm making poor financial decisions.  You would think that after digging ourselves out of such a huge hole that we'd manage our money correctly 100% of the time.  

The truth is that we are still human and make mistake after mistake on our financial planning.  

Related Post:  How to Create your First Financial Plan

So here is the big question: 

Why am I still broke even though I'm mostly out of debt and making a decent income?

For me, it is purely because I'm not tracking my money and budgeting like I should be. I've gotten a bit lazy and as a result, need to make some major changes to my personal finances.  

Now for the second big questions. 

Why are you constantly broke?

Being broke is purely a mindset in my opinion, but in order to figure out why your mindset is off, you've got to do a bit of digging.

• Do you budget?
• Do you track your money?
• Do you constantly overspend?
• Is your income too low?
• Do you need to simplify?
• Do you have too much debt?

Honestly, there are literally hundreds of reason you are broke.  In most cases, it is a combination of all of these factors.  

Until you can figure out what is causing you to be broke, you'll never be able to get organized enough to get yourself to a good place financially.

When we were drowning in debt, I focused all of my energy on getting out of debt and paying off everything I possibly could.  

Now that we are moving on to the next phase in our financial plan, I'm focusing my effort on planning for retirement and trying to put as much money away as possible.  Every life phase means a slightly different way of attaching your financial planning and find ways of keeping yourself from being broke.

If you find that you make good money and still struggle to pay the bills it is probably a result of one of these 6 reasons that you are broke.

I know that being broke is hard, but I also know that if you are willing to begin budgeting and control your spending you will quickly be able to turn your financial picture around.  It won't be easy, but it is definitely possible and worth the effort.