Who am I?

Your best friend or greatest enemy, I am your greatest companion. I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden. I will push you onwards or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command.

Half the things you do, you might as well turn over to me and I'll do them quickly and correctly. I'm easily managed, but you must be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and, after a few lessons, I'll do it automatically. I'm the servant of all great men and, alas, of all failures as well.

Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures. I work with the precision of a scientist and the passion of a patriot. You many run me for profit or run me for ruin; it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me and I will put the world at your feet. But be easy with me and I'll destroy you.

Who am I? I am Habit!

---Author Unknown

Let me begin by saying that I have ADD - It is very difficult for me to stay focused on one thing for a long amount of time. I subscribe to Success Begins Today, a personal development blog. Now being ADD I can't claim to *read* blogs - I only skim them.

Well, over at SBT I skimmed a post by John updating his readers about his goal to train himself to master a new habit every month. I only got as far as the first paragraph, but I thought, what a wonderful idea! If I could master a new financial habit every month how much faster would that accelerate my goal to get out of debt? I haven't really even put pen to paper yet, but I think it will take about 2 years for me to pay off my credit card debt. By that time I'll be out of college and can then make progress on my ~10k in school loans.

Ok, so my point is, I bet if I could master a few financial habits that I could shave a few months off of my 2 year goal and get debt free even faster.

So, my goal for the month of February is . . . . . .drum roll please . . . . . . to take my lunch to work every day.

Ok, now when I say every day what I really mean is 90% of the time. No, I'm not slacking before I even begin. I've learned that with goal setting you must write the goal down, make it attainable, make it measurable, AND find some way to reward yourself for accomplishing the goal. So what I plan to do is to take my lunch to work with me for 9 days, then on the last Friday of the 2 week period I can treat myself to lunch.

Lunch really hasn't been a problem for me like it is for some. Some people can drop +$10 a day on lunch at work - I've worked with these people and for a while I was one of these people. But what some don't realize is that even if you spend $5 on lunch every other day you are throwing away at least $50/month. I don't know about you, but for me that's a credit card payment. I'd rather bring a brown bag with a fresh sandwich than choke down a burger and fries that will leave me poorer and closer to bypass surgery!

So for me the benefits are three fold, I save money, and hopefully I can start eating better, and lastly, I can begin to learn how to gain mastery over my friend greatest companion, my habits.