If You Didn’t Act on It, Don’t Complain About It

I voted today.

I voted because I feel it’s my patriotic duty—but I also have more selfish reasons. You see—I can’t justify complaining about politics for the next two years if I hadn’t.

By acting on my itch, I’ve done just about the only thing under my direct control in this political system (other than activism or running for office, of course—but both need too much effort).

This has immense personal finance applications, since most of what I hear all day from friends, colleagues, and even people around the Web stinks of complaints. Stop it!

• Don’t complain about being broke if you haven’t looked for more income or you still have Cable TV playing at home.
• Don’t complain about being up to your eyeballs in debt if you haven’t actually figured out what you owe and tried to stop spending.
• Don’t complain about not knowing how you spend money if you haven’t taken advantage of the many free tracking tools available to you.
• Don’t complain about losing your money in the market if you took the advice of a friend or coworker without doing your own research and learning the basics of investing.

Do I need to go on? How about instead:

• When you see something wrong with your money, write it down. When you have a few minutes, think of immediate actions you can take to begin fixing it.
• When you hear yourself complaining about money, stop and think of what you do have to work with instead.
• Instead of focusing on how far you have to go, shift to how far you’ve already come and build on your success.

When you take the action instead of standing idly by, at least you can say you tried. And that’s the first step toward true change.

P.S. Go and vote today!

Photo by Theresa Thompson