I have to follow up yesterday’s post with more musings on another A&E show. I discovered Obsessed last night. I had never heard of the show, but I’m in love. It focuses on a few individuals that struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It’s not just the “I don’t like germs” OCD, but like crazy intense “I put on the clothes that my father died in every night” type OCD. People on this show have some crazy obsessions and it’s interesting to see how it effects their lives, but even more interesting is their determination to overcome their cumpulsions. Definitely inspring.
Now let’s take the premise of this show and tie it in to personal finance shall we? I bet a fair share of us PFers are obsessed with our finances. I know J. Money has blogged about his obesessive compulsive checking of his site stats (We are probably all guilty of this). I have blogged before about my obsession with learning about finances and how it all started. Mr. PrimeTime also has a similar article. I bet we all have things we do that we would never want our friends to know about because they would think we were cuckoo. For example, I probably check my Roth IRA balance 20 times a day. This goes against the typical financial advice, to put your retirement accounts out of mind for the next 40 something years. Or how about the fact that I hate driving my car because I know every mile I put on it depreciates it just a little more (I only put 4K on my car last year).
I would love to see the show focus on a few of us PFers who chase interest rates, buy and sell stocks like nobodies business, and know all the latest financial news before it even hits the press. A healthy amount of PF obsession can be a wonderful thing, but going overboard can cause unnecessary difficulties in your life. If you are a PF OCD victim like me, let this post serve as a reminder to put ourselves in check and think “Do I really need to transfer my credit card balance for a 0.01% better ineterest rate?”
What are your OCD behaviors? Even if they are not PF related I still wanted to hear ’em. Everytime I drive through a yellow light, I have to kiss my hand and then touch the cieling of my car. I have even tried to force myself to not do it, but I get super anxious and always end up completing the ritual. I’m a freak.
I am obsessed with my budget. I think about it constantly. It is my drug. If I can't look at it, I am thinking about looking at it. I need help.
I have some weird obsession with my saving percentage on the grocery budget. I clip coupons like a nutter, am on a grocery train, joined the grocery game, obsessively put items back if it's not a good enough deal…
I also obsessively check my Adsense account, even though I only make $.25 a day.
Rebecca C- Maybe you should see a therapist. Drugs are bad 🙂
Frugal Urbanite- I feel ya on the adsense account obsession. Mine died down though after weeks of seeing zero 🙁
I'm obsessed with re-tooling my budget, constantly. I'm constantly thinking: should I save more here? Pay extra on this student loan or that one? Stuff like that.
I'm also really obsessed with making sure that everything is turned off before I leave the house…the coffee maker, straightening iron, etc. It's really annoying, but I worry something will start a fire!
Food. And tracking calories. But really, this is to make myself realize how much I eat and decrease it. I eat a lot, I realized…
I hate that I drove my truck to work every day this week, because both tanks are almost empty and I really don't want to spend the money to fill up, considering the last time I did so was April 27th. Holy crap, I just looked that up – 2 months ago! Daaaaamn….
I also have the same obsession as RebeccaC and TeacHer. Fiddling with it constantly.
My OCD behaviors: making sure that everything's off, unplugged or locked before leaving the house, making sure that all the car doors are locked, using utensils with the same design… you get the picture.
My PF obsession is having a massive, automated spreadhseet that tracks and categorizes every single bit of my spending. I don't think this is a bad thing (as it gives me all the info I need), but I'm always working on expanding it, even though I only use say 20% of the info it gives me.
My non-PF obsession is that I'm extremely superstitious when it comes to college football. I am not superstitious about anything else in my life.