Uncommon Cents

Many of us know that snowflaking–the art of accumulating small amounts of money that happen to come your way to make a “snowball”, whether used to pay off debt or reach a savings goal–can be a powerful technique in your personal financial picture.

But what is the opposite of snowflaking?

The opposite of snowflaking is when you have small amounts of money fall out of your possession on a consistent basis. This is done, in my experience, primarily two ways:

1) Little “convenience” expenses that add up to one huge inconvenient bill (like buying lunch at work every day or stopping by the convenience store for a cup of coffee in the morning);

or

2) Small monthly fees that add up to one huge headache (like the $5 more a month for the 100 text messages you only use five of on your $10 more a month for twice as many minutes that you don’t use a third of cell phone bill, or the $10 cable television package upgrade so you can get 20 more channels you don’t watch).

Just as snowflaking is a powerful way of meeting your savings or debt reduction goals, the opposite of snowflaking is a powerful way of assuring your goals get met later. It’s a way to make sure that you don’t pay debt down nearly as quickly as you could, because a bunch of snowflakes escaping from your budget could easily mean a couple of hundred dollars a month!

Keeping close track of your spending–a spending log, a weekly review of your expenses, a baseline budget, and a goal budget–can help you figure out if you have any reverse snowflaking going on, and how to stop it. Remember: every dollar spent is a dollar that goes to keeping you in debt longer or keeping you away from your goals. Make the snowflakes work for you, not against you!

Tags: Budgeting, Debt, Goals

Trackback URI | Comments RSS