Chrometophobia

“The best gift you can give to yourself is to invest in yourself” ~ Pooja Agnihotri.

Before I spend, I ask myself a million and one times—the reason for spending. I seek advice from another party to know if what I plan to spend on is worth it. Even after spending, I mentally access if it was worth the money.

At first, I assumed it was the myth that was playing out in my life—Accountants don’t like to spend on themselves.

After carefully accessing myself, I realized it wasn’t the stereotypes, rather it was the poor financial decisions I made while growing up, that reshaped my mind.

Becoming a working-class adult does a lot to you—mentally, emotionally, physically, and many other -lys we don’t talk about. And spending on oneself is part of it.

Spending money becomes much more difficult than working for it. The reason for this remains unknown but most people attribute this to the number of hours they put in to earn money. So, once they remember the stress, it becomes hard to spend.

This year, I decided to be intentional about a lot of things. And, my intentionality is stretching out to myself—Spending and also investing.

I know. I know. You must be wondering what is the difference between spending and investing. Well, there are a lot. But, they are both important components that aid a healthy financial plan.

I’ve made bad financial decisions that if I begin to recount them, I might never forgive myself in years to come. To become better, I’ve decided to stick with some things.

I am sticking to spending and also investing.

For your daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly consumption and good living, you need to spend. While for your accumulated value, you need to invest.

For someone struggling with chrometophobia—the fear of spending money. The ‘M’ word can cause you to get anxious. Spending, and investing become pretty hard decisions to make even when you do know you have enough to spend and spare.

There are some ways to tackle this because being alive requires you to spend at the end of the day.

• Weigh your needs and wants

Weighing your needs and wants sounds cliché but it’s the best baby step to take if you want to stay alive. Understand what your needs are, and also, separate them from your wants.

• Have a list

This definitely has to be the thing that has been helping my spending ministry. I segmented and categorized everything in a list. Know that what you’ll need for your body is different from what you’ll need for your face. When you can outline this, then you are on your way to stifling that fear.

• Start small

Starting small has become a regular teaching, but it cannot be overemphasized. The mistake we make is thinking we need the money to be very huge before we can spend. For someone with chrometophobia, it gets hard to remove from a huge sum, so it’s best to start small and completely tick off all that is on the list. Buy-one-thing-at-a-time. You ain’t Elon musk or Otedola who can completely tick off everything on their list (That’s if they can)…but, start small.

• Think long-term and short-term

You cannot be on planet Earth and not spend money, mentally accept this fact. When you’ve done this, it becomes easy to act on the short-term and long-term tips.

Long-term requires you to invest, so think of ways you can get accumulated value. Probably yours can be registering for a course or becoming better at that one thing you’ve always desired. While short-term is you embracing the daily expense that comes with being human—paying bills, buying deodorants, eating, clothes, and, shoes, etc.

I know the list is endless, but that has worked for me so far.

Peace, happiness, and love are daily practices. Give time and energy to that which you want more of in your life. Invest in yourself for a higher quality of life. You’re worth it.

Akiroq Brost