Creating Better Habits

At the risk of stating the obvious, once you've obtained credit, it is essential to make your payments on time. Payment history is the biggest factor in determining your credit score. The more on-time payments you have, the more your credit score will improve. It's a good idea to start with no more than two credits and be careful how much you spend. If I had a dollar for every young person on the other side of my desk explaining how they overspent when they were younger and are still paying the price many years later, I'd have a wheelbarrow full of money. In other words, overspending is common. It's a good time for it not to be common. Habits are very powerful, both positively and negatively.

We don't decide our future, but we decide our habits and our habits decide our future. First, we must notice the habit we want to improve and we must have the desire to change it. Then, we must make a decision to put in the work to create new disciplines in order to make permanent changes. To assist in this, we have included a

"Habit Tracker" on the following page.

We live in a society that celebrates

immediate gratification. The multitude of choices you make today will not benefit you right away. If you do a good job today at work, you will normally get a paycheck in a couple of weeks or maybe a bonus in a few months? If you save money now, it won't accumulate immediately. It adds up over time. We live in what scientists term a "delayed-return environment", because we can put in work for years before our actions deliver the intended reward.

James Clear states in his book, Atomic Habits, "The human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment. The earliest remains of modern humans, known as Homo Sapiens, are approximately two hundred thousand years old. These were the first humans to have a brain relatively similar to ours. In particular, the neocortex--the newest part of the brain and the region responsible for higher functions like language--was roughly the same size two hundred thousand years ago as today. You are walking around with the same hardware as your Paleolithic ancestors." In the large scheme of things and time, it is fairly recent, approximately the latest five hundred years that society has evolved to a predominantly delayed-return environment. Meaning that we now obtain much more success from delayed gratification than immediate gratification.