lust

Flashback Friday: 42 Ways the 7 Deadly Sins Are Keeping You Poor

Chrissa Hardy — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 10:31:32 +0000

It turns out, most of us are a bunch of sinners. And those sins we commit regularly might be the sole reason for our financial struggles. Whether it's feelings of lust, greed, gluttony, or the others, those feelings lead to making terrible financial choices. How, exactly? Let's find out.

6 Ways Gluttony Is Keeping You Poor — Of course it's okay to overindulge on food and drink every once in awhile, but that can lead to celebrating with food and drink, and then commiserating with food and drink, and then eventually you're overindulging all the time and your wallet is empty. That's not great.

6 Ways Sloth Is Keeping You Poor — When you're feeling lazy, your motivation to do pretty much anything is nonexistent. As with any of these sins, a little is fine. But consistent instances of slothlike behavior can ruin your career, and your earning potential.

7 Ways Pride Is Keeping You Poor — Pride is a tough sin to beat. We all want to put our best face forward. Isn't that why we're all on social media? But when you're putting all your energy into maintaining a certain lifestyle, your finances can take a serious hit.

6 Ways Lust Is Keeping You Poor — When you're lusting after someone or something, it's hard to think straight. You might be sober, but your decision-making ability is drunk and needs to go home. You'll make impulse decisions that won't make any sense, and could ruin your budget, and your life.

6 Ways Envy Is Keeping You Poor — Similar to pride, envy is all about comparing yourself to others in an unhealthy way. Who cares what other people have though? Envy will never lead to happiness, so keeping up with the Joneses will only make you miserable in the end — and broke.

5 Ways Wrath Is Keeping You Poor — There's nothing wrong with being a deep-feeling, passionate person. But wrath is the extreme and destructive end of that spectrum, and it will ruin you, as much as it will the object of your wrath.

6 Ways Greed Is Keeping You Poor — For people suffering with greed, less is never more. This sin can lead you to a life of excess, extreme debt, and becoming the kind of person who lies so much that the truth becomes "fake news." And who wants to be that person?

This article is from Chrissa Hardy of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

6 Ways Lust Is Keeping You Poor

Paul Michael — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:01:04 +0000

When you hear the word lust, your mind naturally wanders to sexual desire. But lust goes way beyond that. At the heart of lust is an intense longing for something, be it sex, money, power, possessions, knowledge, war, experience, or as the song goes, life. Sometimes that intense longing is a great motivator, and can drive you to do great things. However, it can also be the root of some serious money problems. Here are seven such examples. How many do you recognize?

1. It Drives You to Buy More Than You Need

An insatiable lust to have the latest, greatest gadgets, clothing, shoes, and other possessions, can leave you in serious financial trouble. For some people, it's not enough to have a good phone. It needs to be the newest model, even if that means replacing a model that's barely six months old.

Other people get a rush, and a release of endorphins, when buying new products. They feel a sense of great joy, a thrill, when they purchase items like jewelry, watches, cars, and purses. That thrill, much like the pleasure felt when drinking alcohol or smoking a cigarette, can become addictive. You want to replicate it, and have to keep doing so over and over again. TV shows like Hoarding: Buried Alive have featured people that have rooms filled with clothing, shoes, coats, gadgets, and jewelry that have not only never been used… they were not even taken out of the shopping bags.

2. It Can Lead to Destructive Addictions

At a base level, lust for sex and sexual imagery has become an increasingly dangerous problem in the U.S., and around the world. Easy, instant access to X-rated materials on the Internet has led to thousands of cases of addiction to this highly stimulating resource. And while it is free on some levels, it can become expensive, especially with monthly subscription fees and webcam model charges. What's worse is that this addiction can spill over into other avenues of life. People become so obsessed that they look up materials at work, leading to disciplinary action and job losses. Relationships suffer, and the abuse of alcohol, marijuana, and even food, leads the addict into a spiraling cycle of defeat and depression.

3. It Can Severely Cloud Your Judgment

When engulfed by lust, your brain is not thinking clearly. And again, this is not just about sexual desire. A prime example of this can be found at any auction, when several people want the same item, and a bidding war breaks out. People who are normally of very sound mind, and who set a price they would not go over before the auction, lose their common sense. They want it. They have to have it. They will go over their limit by hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. Some have described the experience as being in a euphoric fog, which clears and makes way for shame and regret once the furor has died down. You may have experienced something like this yourself, especially if you've done a little gambling in Las Vegas. Lust for money, sex, and power can all lead to some very muddy thinking.

4. It Consumes Your Valuable Time

Lust is one of the seven deadly sins that can utterly consume your every waking moment. When you are gripped by lust, nothing else matters. Indeed, the very definition of lust contains words like "uncontrollable desire" and "inordinate cravings," neither of which can be viewed as positive. People under the spell of lust will find themselves constantly performing actions that keep them highly focused on the object of their intense affections, be it a person, a possession, or a promotion. Nothing else matters. Your life, and your existence, bows down to this one overwhelming drive, and you can find it very easy to block out all other aspects of life. Bills don't get paid. Loved ones go ignored. Your performance at work suffers. Your time is being eaten up by one thing, and that can only lead to a loss… in more ways than one.

5. It Makes You Do Things That Are Out of Character

Someone obsessed by a deep desire for something will start to make decisions that are surprising, or even shocking to friends and family. You have no doubt witnessed it yourself. Perhaps a good friend became infatuated with someone at work, and started to do things that were way out of character; for instance, spending more money on items and pastimes that they would never have done a few months earlier. This is lust at its darkest and most dangerous. When you really want something; when nothing else matters; when the pursuit and possession of something is your only goal; that's when you can momentarily lose yourself and in the process, lose friends, money, opportunities — even your job.

6. It Can Literally Destroy Your Life

That may sound dramatic, but it's a sad fact. Every year, thousands of people around the world find their lives in ruins due to the domino effect of lust. For some people, they get embroiled in the highly addictive world of adult websites, forking over monthly fees and exposing their credit cards to some very sketchy businesses. Identity theft is common when the victim is engaging in an activity they would rather not let other people find out about. It can be embarrassing to report, and even harder to pursue a claim. Other people lust after things they just cannot have, and get into debt, gamble, take out payday loans, and find themselves in a world of financial hurt. And then there are those who lose friends and family, which can lead to substance abuse and other forms of hardship. At the end of the day, lust is dangerous because it controls you, way more than any other sin. If you don't spot the warning signs early enough, you could find yourself in serious trouble.

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This article is from Paul Michael of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Why Scientists Say You Should Be Committing the 7 Deadly Sins

Carrie Kirby — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 13:00:10 +0000

Sinning ain't what it used to be. Past societies considered many things to be sinful that we would let slide or even celebrate today. And if one were to take every line in the Bible as law, you would never get a tattoo, gossip, or wear a goatee.

But could the big baddies — the Seven Deadly Sins — ever be considered good for you? Turns out in one way or another, science supports some version of all of them.

1. Pride

Pride's developed a bad rep in years past, but nowadays we're always being told we should have pride in ourselves, our school team, and even our ethnicity. So which is it?

Apparently both, according to laboratory research by psychologists Jessica Tracy and Richard Robins, who isolated two distinct forms of price: hubris (bad) and "authentic pride" (good). People who exhibit authentic pride value hard work and tend to be engaged with life. And did you know that Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook to boost his pride?

2. Greed

"Greed is healthy," alpha trader (and later convicted felon and Gordon Gekko inspiration) Ivan Boesky famously told UC Berkeley grads. But is it really?

Greed is an easy sin to condemn, in part because it's so easy to hate people who have taken more than their share. Look up Forbes' list of billionaires and ask yourself how fond you feel of each of those individuals. Any of the super rich who are well liked probably get their following from donating large portions of their wealth — an apparent lack of greed.

But let's be honest: We're biologically programmed to go out and get what we need. "Greed is what gets you and me out of our beds and off to work. It's what keeps us out of debt and saving for our retirement," certified financial planner Neal Frankle wrote.

Greed is almost always good for the individual that feels it, but it could be bad for the individual's society, writes Washington State University communications professor Richard F. Taflinger. But laws that constrain individual greed too much could also be harmful, because people whose greed isn't rewarded can lose the will to work. Look at all the failed communes out there.

"Unrestrained greed is detrimental to society; unrestrained disapproval of greed is detrimental to society. People attempt to find a balance between biological imperative and social necessity," Taflinger writes.

3. Envy

Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D. and author of Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, counsels that we can harness feelings of envy or jealousy to push us forward in our careers.

"Envy can open up doors you never saw or were afraid to walk through before. Jealousy can lead you to treasure things and people you might have taken for granted," Reynolds writes in Psychology Today.

For instance, if you find yourself feeling envious of a colleague who won an award for something you also do, ask yourself what you can learn from your colleague's success? What is she doing that you're not?

4. Wrath

Carnegie Mellon psychologist Jennifer Lerner studied anger by forcing test subjects to count backwards by sevens on camera, and making them start over every time they goofed. People who exhibited fear showed higher biological signs of stress than people who showed anger. And as any woman who has given birth probably knows, another sign of wrath, letting loose a few expletives, is clinically proven to relieve pain.

So shout, shout, get it all out. It's healthy!

5. Lust

You might have already heard that sex is good for you when you're in a committed relationship; it's aerobic, reduces stress, and so forth. But that's boring old "in a relationship" sex. What about lusty sex? As in, outside a relationship sex?

Turns out that how hooking up affects people's wellbeing depends on their motivation for hooking up. According to New York University and Cornell researchers, undergrads who "slept around" actually felt better after sex — as long as they were hooking up for positive reasons like the fun of it. If they were engaging in revenge sex or had been pressured into the act, the emotional consequences were negative.

6. Gluttony

In the history of mankind, stuffing as much as we could down our gullets was surely the way to go.

"Binging was probably useful in our evolutionary past, when food was scarce and our ancestors needed to eat as much as possible after they came across a berry patch or brought down a fresh kill on the hunt," writes Karen Schrock Simring in "Accidental Gluttons" for Scientific American.

But now that an era of plenty has exposed residents of the world's wealthy nations to the dangers of obesity and diabetes? We can only say that scientists would advise you to be a glutton for the right foods. If you're going to indulge, at least indulge in some nutrients you might otherwise be lacking.

7. Sloth

Do coworkers give you the evil eye because you take a break for a personal phone call, or a nap on the lobby couch mid-afternoon? You might need to find a lower-profile place to nap, but don't stop taking breaks.

A study from the journal Cognition showed that taking even the briefest of breaks can improve your performance on tasks, meaning that when you look like you're slacking, you're probably gearing up to outperform your nose-to-the-grindstone co-workers.

The benefits of naps are well documented. The National Sleep Foundation acknowledges that nappers may be burdened with the stigma of being lazy or having low standards, but asserts that if we get past that, many of us — especially shift workers and long-distance drivers — can really benefit from a 10-minute nap now and then.

Do you regularly run afoul of these sins? For good or ill?

This article is from Carrie Kirby of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

The seven deadly sins of consumerism (and the frugal redemption).

Paul Michael — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:43:46 +0000

Sit ye down, hold your loved ones tight, and get ready for the seven deadliest sins of the modern day consumer.

(By the way, I know I’m a movie buff when I can reference two of the greatest films ever made in one blog headline. If you don’t know what they are, shame on you. But even more shame on you if you’re committing these sins right now.)

Who says they’re the seven deadly sins? Well, I do. I’m no authority on the subject, I certainly didn’t write the consumer bible. But life experience has taught me that indulging in any of these sins leads to a path of debt, disillusionment and despair. If you find yourself in the position of indulging one or more of these sins on a daily basis, seek the frugal redemption.

“I’ll take that, and that, and that, and that…and who cares how I’ll pay for it. In fact, I’ll put it on the good old credit card and think about it later. Hey, it comes with six months no interest anyway. Sweet!”

Sound familiar? Greed is fairly ugly and I see it everywhere. Our obsession as a society with material things has gone beyond the norm. As Madonna once said, we’re living in a material world. But I don’t think anyone realized how bad it’s become. The ‘buy now, pay later’ mentality is rife. But when our own government is in debt to the tune of $8,892,888,862,434.37 (that was at the time of writing this article, and climbing $1.93 billion per day) they’re hardly setting the standard for fiscal responsibility. An argument for another time perhaps. Still, the message is clear. Give in to greed, make way for debt.

The Frugal Redemption
If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. By that I don’t mean save up $300,000 and drop it on a new house. But examine your budget (better still, MAKE a budget…the first step on the road to debt is not having a budget). Have three bank accounts – one for saving, one for bills, one for fun. If you spend your fun money for the month, hey guess what, you’re done.

Get out of the cycle of wanting things you really don’t need or can afford. Stop and think. Often my wife will go shopping for baby clothes for our newborn. She’ll get to the counter with an armful of clothes, then think again about what she really actually wants or needs. The pile gets much, much shorter.

It can wait. "401k? It can wait. Savings account? Next month. Paying off the credit card? I’ve got time. Coupons? Waste of time. Deal-hunting? Why bother?”

Sloth is a great enemy of frugality. And I know, I was a former indulger of sloth. I put off the 401k contributions because I wanted to use the extra money. I hated clipping coupons, and they were only worth 50 cents or a $1 so who cares? But boy, those little amounts soon add up.

Basically, you snooze, you lose. Put off saving in your 401k (especially if your company matches it) and you’re literally throwing away money. Plus, you have to put a whole lot more away later on to catch up. Make the minimum payments on your credit card and you’ll be paying it off for decades.

The Frugal Redemption
Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today? Make it the day to finally start getting your life in order if you haven’t yet made plans for the future. Ask your HR officer about the 401k plan. Look through the coupons in the Sunday paper. You will find some that apply to you, I guarantee it. Start adding more to your savings account, even if it’s just $50 a month to begin with. Add more to your credit card payments if you can. This is all about forming good habits.

If you can get a better deal by walking 10 minutes further down the high street, do it. Shop around whenever and wherever you can. The exercise won’t hurt either, we’ve become a nation of drivers. Use Internet shopping comparison tools to find great bargains. Check out sites like The Bargainist , The Consumerist , and of course, Wisebread. It’s very easy to be lazy, but in the long run you’re only fooling yourself and hurting your future. Seize the day.

My dad used to say to me “your eyes are bigger than your belly” and he was right. I was always happy to take more, be it candy or extra roast potatoes on my Sunday lunch. But all too often I didn’t eat them and they went in the trash, or went bad. Or I made myself sick.

Sadly, I am still the same today, although I’m really trying to get out of it. “Hey look hon, 8lbs of cheese for $10, bargain!” It’s only when my wife tells me that, as usual, the cheese will go bad before we finish it that I’ll think twice. I’m a sucker for BOGO deals, regardless of whether I need two, or even one of the item on sale. Buying in bulk is deceptive. Great for things like rice, toilet paper and diapers. Not so great when it’s got an expiration date that’s fast approaching. No-one wants cheese sandwiches three times a day.

The Frugal Redemption
Again, this is all about asking yourself a few questions before you pop something in the shopping cart. Do I really need 5 cartons of orange juice because I can save 20 cents per quart? Will my family benefit from this buy 10, get 10 free offer? Is it a deal, or false economy? As those great infomercials often say, when you throw away food it’s “cash in the trash.” Remember, just because it’s on clearance or a bargain, it doesn’t mean it’s the bargain for you. Being a glutton for special offers could make you a glutton for punishment.

I know people who tell themselves, “heck, I deserved it” when they’re sporting a new jewel-encrusted watch or hand-made pair of the finest leather shoes. Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t mean it’s a wise move. It’s fine to splurge once in a while, but making a habit of it can lead to all sorts of problems, including shopping addictions.

Worse still, pride has this nasty habit of making you do things you don’t want to do. People will borrow cash to go out on the town rather than admit to being short of money that week. And that means buying a new dress, or buying a few rounds of drinks, plus the expensive meal. All because pride won’t let them admit, to their friends no less, that they’re trying to save money or that they just don’t have the cash.

The Frugal Redemption
Give pride a vacation. It’s good to be proud of an achievement, or something your son or daughter has done at school, but embracing pride to allow yourself too many luxuries is never going to have a happy ending. Avoid places that will tempt you. If you have a habit of going nuts in Target or Macy’s, stay away. If you’re a sucker for a particular section of the store (watches, shoes) steer clear.

As for feeling too proud to admit you don’t quite have the cash to go out, your friends will understand. Your co-workers will understand. In fact, anyone who doesn’t is probably someone you really don’t want to know. There’s no shame in staying home on a Friday night if it means you avoid the cycle of borrowing, debt and depression. Pride has its place…but it can be a frugal shopper’s worst nightmare.

“Don’t get mad, get even.” Wise words, although the ‘getting even’ part is not always appropriate either. I think it would be more apt to say “don’t get mad, get what you want.”

Anyway, the point is this. I’ve watched people blow up at customer service folks. I’ve seen angry letters, I’ve heard angry phone calls. I’ve witnessed huge lists of demands spouted by human versions of the Tazmanian Devil cartoon. Most of the time, all it gets them is higher blood pressure and a security guard showing them the door. Anger is the first way to show you’ve lost control of the situation.

The Frugal Redemption
A frugal shopper knows that you get way more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. My former article on complaining highlighted this process, but it’s not just about making a complaint. It’s about life in general.

Guess what happens if you treat you waiter with appreciation and a smile instead of disdain. Quicker service, more fries, bigger drinks, you name it, I’ve had them all. A polite conversation with most people will get you much further than raging and expecting something for nothing. Be nice.

This can best be summed up with that old “Keeping Up With The Jones’” adage. And I have several friends who are both house-poor and car-poor because of it.

Why are so many people in this country living in houses they cannot afford, driving cars they could never afford and wearing clothes that are way too expensive? The simple answer is still way too long to print here, but a big part of it is envy.

I remember being told that people measure their own misery and success by their surroundings, and it’s completely true. If you live in a nice little home and are surrounded by other nice little homes, you feel good. You’ve done well. Transplant that nice little home into a rich area filled with mansions, swimming pools and landscaping. Now, it doesn’t look so good. Actually it sucks. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, I want a big house! I want a Cadillac Escalade! I want a Rolex!

The same applies to your job, your clothes, in fact, everything around you. But it’s all relative. And most important, you have no idea what the people around you do, or how they pay for what they have. Maybe they’re in debt up to their eyeballs and spend every night crying themselves to sleep. Maybe they work 24/7 to pay for the things they can never really enjoy. Maybe they had rich folks. But you should never compare, it will only lead to jealousy and misery.

The Frugal Redemption
This one is not easy. After all, as a species we’re always going to compare ourselves to our friends and neighbors. But before you stop reading this and look out of your window to stare at the new Ferrari parked in your neighbor’s driveway, here are a few facts (as of Nov 2006, provided by www.globalissues.org ).

• Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
• Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.
• According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation

Now, I didn’t mean to bring you down. But it certainly brings life crashing into perspective if you think you’re not fortunate. Trust me, if you’re reading this then you’ve got access to more than most people will ever have. You’re lucky.

First and foremost, you can relax. I’m not about to tell you that sex is not a good way to be frugal (actually, a romantic night in bed with your partner is a lot cheaper than going to the movies…and much more fun).

No, the kind of lust I’m talking about is that longing, aching desire that takes over you and cuts off the common sense to your brain. In my case, I’ve been lusting after a 42” LCD TV for about, hmm, a year now. And every week, it grabs me a little bit more. It doesn’t help that every time I go into Best Buy they have more of them, and they cost less. But the frugal shopper in me is winning, so far. It’s saying “wait, the price will drop more, the quality will go up, you don’t need it.” But it won’t be long before the lust wins, telling me that I could be watching my Blade Runner DVD in HD on a huge screen and be drooling at the mouth in movie nirvana.

The Frugal Redemption
It’s all a question of willpower. The 32” goldfish bowl TV I have right now is not great. But it’s not bad either. It’s just a TV after all, which I watch less and less these days as my babies get older. Put things into perspective. You’re a smart cookie…you’re a frugal shopper after all.

My advice is this. Concentrate on what you really need, not what you want. There’s a big difference. And think for a second about how much better life would actually be with that object you’re lusting after right now. If it’s a new car, how much time do you actually spend in it? Is the one you have all that bad? Could the money be spent on something way more important or impactful, like perhaps a family vacation (life experiences stay with you forever…a car, on average, 5 years).

At the end of the day, wants are fleeting. They are all too often replaced by bigger and more expensive wants. The objects of your desire will one day be put out with the garbage, or sold, or given away. You can’t take them with you. So, calm your lusts.

There you go. Seven deadly sins. Not a short tale, but a worthy one I think. We all succumb to them from time to time, but we can be strong. We can.

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This article is from Paul Michael of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: