Financially Obese: What do people who overeat and overspend have in common and what to do to help?
AI's response in regular print | Beverly Hills, CFP®, Joe O'Boyle's in italics
“You've become financially obese. What do people who overeat and people who overspend have in common?”
The behaviors of overeating and overspending have more in common than one might initially think. Here are some of the key similarities:
Lack of Self-Control: Both regular overeating and overspending can be signs of a lack of self-control or impulse control. It's easy to give in to the immediate satisfaction of a meal or material purchase, without considering the long-term consequences to your personal health and financial well being.
Emotional Triggers: Both behaviors can be triggered by emotions. People might overspend or overeat as a way of dealing with stress, sadness, boredom, or other emotional states. This is often referred to as emotional eating or retail therapy.
Short-Term Gratification vs. Long-Term Goals: Just as overeating can sabotage weight loss goals towards achieving better health, overspending can undermine financial goals towards achieving financial security. In both cases, the instant gratification of the behavior conflicts with longer-term objectives.
Denial or Lack of Awareness: People who regularly overeat or overspend can often be in denial about their behavior, or they may lack awareness of just how much they're consuming or spending. This is where tracking “my eating” or tracking “my spending” can be extremely beneficial. Understand that “my eating” and “my spending” are entirely my choice. Taking ownership and responsibility for your lifestyle is a first step towards making positive changes.
Cycle of Guilt: Both overeating and overspending can lead to feelings of guilt or regret, which often leads to more of the behavior and cements poor habits, creating an unhealthy cycle. Warren Buffett famously shared, “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
Need for a Lifestyle Change: Overcoming both problems typically involves more than just a temporary diet or budget. A quick fix is not your answer. It requires actual changes to your habits and your lifestyle. This starts with creating a vision for your life. You need a purpose, a reason, in order to create healthier habits and avoid impulsive behavior and practice delaying gratification.
Professional Help May Be Needed: Just as some people may need the help of a nutritionist, personal trainer or therapist to deal with overeating, some people may need the help of a financial advisor or counselor to deal with overspending.
Understanding these similarities can be helpful in addressing these behaviors. It's not just about cutting back on food intake or spending, but about addressing the underlying issues and patterns that lead to these behaviors and habits in the first place.
“What are some simple ways that people who overeat and overspend can improve their lives? What are the first steps and small changes that can create positive momentum and slowly build healthier habits?”
Building small, manageable habits is often the most effective way to create long-term change, both in terms of overeating and overspending. Here are some suggestions:
Start Tracking: One of the first steps to making a change is understanding the current situation. That can mean keeping a food diary of “my eating” or tracking “my spending” first for a week and then for a month. The act of writing everything down can often highlight problem areas and create a sense of accountability.
Set Specific, Achievable Goals: Rather than setting vague goals like "eat less" or "spend less," create specific, achievable goals. This could be something like "eat one serving of vegetables each day" or "limit eating out to once a week only on Saturday." This could also be "putting the credit card in a drawer" and “limiting spending to just one transaction a day”.
Create a Budget/Meal Plan: Planning ahead can help control both eating and spending. That might mean creating a weekly meal plan for bringing your lunch to work and a shopping list so that you are grocery shopping with specific intent in order to avoid impulsive food purchases. This means setting a budget and creating your personal spending plan by differentiating between your wants and needs.
Find Healthy Coping Mechanisms: If stress or emotions are triggers, find healthier ways to cope, such as exercise, meditation, or getting outside and going on regular walks with a friend or partner.
Make Small Changes: Rather than trying to overhaul everything at once, start with small changes. That might mean cooking at home one extra night a week, or cutting back on one category of discretionary spending, such as canceling a subscription service that you’re not actually using and don’t actually value (Cutting Cable / Netflix / Hulu / Disney+ / HBO Max / Apple TV etc).
Practice Mindfulness: Mindfulness can be effective in both areas. Eating mindfully can involve paying more attention to what you're eating, eating slowly, and enjoying each bite. Mindful spending might mean asking yourself whether you really need a purchase, whether it is included in “my spending plan”, and whether it will contribute to your specific long-term financial goals.
Build an Emergency Fund / Healthy Snack Stash: For financial health, an emergency fund can prevent the need for impulse borrowing and avoiding toxic, high interest credit card debt. In terms of dietary health, having a supply of healthy snacks can prevent reaching for unhealthy options in a moment of hunger.
Seek Support: Don't be afraid to seek support, whether that's from a dietician, a financial planner, or even a supportive friend or family member.
Remember that progress is often slow and non-linear, and understand that you will have setbacks as a normal part of the process. The important thing is to keep improving little by little and to keep moving forward towards healthier habits.
What did you think? How did AI do?
About OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool:
GPT (short for "Generative Pre-training Transformer") is a type of language model developed by OpenAI that is trained to generate human-like text. ChatGPT is specifically designed for generating text in a conversational style. It is a machine learning model and has been trained on large datasets of real-world conversations in order to learn the patterns and styles of human communication.
Joe O'Boyle is the founder and principal of O'Boyle Wealth Management, a full service financial planning and investment management firm, located in Beverly Hills, California. Joe O’Boyle was named to InvestmentNews 40 under 40 class of 2016, and has a catalog of financial planning and investing articles on Money.com & U.S. News. Disclosure information.