Butch on a Budget

A few years ago we had some work done on our shower. Later that night, after the plumber left, I was taking my shower and realized he must have adjusted the water temperature settings because it wasn’t getting as hot as it previously had. 

This annoyed me. I like my showers hot. When I step out of the shower I want the mirrors to be fogged up and the bathroom to be hazy with steam. I was not jiving with this new tepid water temperature.

Every time I’d shower I’d complain about how it wasn’t hot enough and whine about how I wanted to fix it. This went on for weeks. Shower, complain, mope, repeat. I was a very grumpy, very big baby about it. 

And then one day, I got in the shower and it was…hot. Like burn away the stress of the day, and turn the bathroom into a steam sauna hot. I was thrilled. 

Surprisingly it wasn’t shower fairies who fixed it. My incredible wife, Cassie, had gone on YouTube, looked up how to fix it, and…fixed it. 

She said it took her 10 minutes. 

I had been complaining for WEEKS, and it was fixable in 10 minutes. Including looking up how to do it. 

A 10-minute fix, and now I have gloriously hot showers every day, and my days are much better for it. 

I honestly don’t know how long I would have continued to complain and suffer had Cassie not intervened, but I’m embarrassed to say it would have been far too long. It already had been far too long. 

But here’s the thing, most times there’s not a Cassie around who’s going to come and fix your problems for you one day while you’re at work. (That would be amazing though.)

And there’s a valuable lesson we can take from this story that we can apply to our financial lives. 

We all have things in our lives that we complain about that are within our power to fix. And they probably take less time and energy to fix than you think. In fact they may take less time and energy than you’re putting into complaining about them. 

We may not know exactly how to fix our problem at the start – Cassie didn’t know how to fix the shower until she looked it up – but it doesn’t mean it’s not totally doable, we just have to take that first step of looking it up. Taking this step made Cassie realize it might not be as hard as to fix the shower as she thought, and then – and this is the important part – she just did the thing. Right then. No putting it on a list, no “I’ll get to it this weekend.” She knew it would take ten minutes, and she did it. 

I challenge you to apply this to your financial life today. Learn from my much-wiser-than-me wife and pick something you’ve been putting off or wanting to learn about and look it up or do it today.

Maybe it’s finally opening a high interest savings account, or setting up automatic investments, maybe it’s figuring out how to improve your credit score and make a plan, or just returning that thing you’ve been meaning to and getting that $40 back. 

One side note; once you choose the thing you’re going to do today, don’t get caught up debating the minutiae and suck all of the momentum out of the room. 

If you’re opening a high-interest savings account, don’t debate the merits between competing accounts – just pick one and move on.

If you’re making a debt payoff plan – don’t get stuck debating if you’ll follow the snowball or avalanche method, just pick one and schedule your payments. 

If want to invest but are terrified of picking the wrong investment, just pick a good low-cost index fund or a target retirement date fund and move on with your life.

No more letting it nag you in the back of your head on a random Tuesday or get carried over to every new week’s to-do list. Whatever it is, decide to do something about it, and do it. 

And afterwards, go take a hot shower to celebrate the little win and relish in your new found power.