How would you help this 25-year-old woman with her budget?

Ramit Sethi of the terrific blog I Will Teach You to Be Rich has a semi-regular feature called The Money Diaries in which he posts a diary written by an anonymous person who has personal finance problems. They are an intimate glimpse at individuals' relationships with money.
His readers offer tips on how the diarist can make changes to improve his or her financial situation.

The most recent Money Diary was written by a 25-year-woman from Honolulu who is a single parent of a special needs child. Her diary is fascinating and sad. She writes checks that she know will bounce, and is hooked on cigarettes, candy, and Coke. She goes to bars and talks guys into buying her drinks and hot dogs. She knows these are bad habits, but her life is out of control, and it seems like she is "self medicating" with sugar, caffeine, and nicotine.

So far, 110 people have offered advice to the anonymous woman. Comment #20 from a woman named Susan Su was the most insightful:

She doesn’t feel like – or act like – an agent in her own life. As a result, things 'happen to' her; but she does not play an active role in making them happen… In psychological terms, this woman has high external locus of control and low self-efficacy. She is stressed, possibly depressed, and does not believe that her actions (earning more, saving more, exercising control over spending) have the power to REALLY change her situation.

Ken H. in Comment #41 offered the best advice:

[F]ind discipline in yourself to give yourself the initial boost in self-esteem. There are certain things that cost nothing but always helped me when I was down about my situation — go to bed at the same time every night, make tomorrow’s lunch at the same time, wake-up at the time every morning. ALWAYS be punctual for all appointments! These things are free and go a long way to feeling better about ourselves.

I agree. The woman's "bad habits" really aren't the problem, as they don't cost that much compared to her other expenses. Making a schedule and sticking to it would give her self-esteem a boost and put some much needed order in her life. The fact that she was able to maintain a diary for a week shows that she can muster up the discipline needed to take steps to gain more control over her life. I wish this woman well in her steps towards gaining the confidence she needs to manage her money and her life in a more responsible way.

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

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