Make High Pay Off Financial Moves
April 25, 2011You wouldn’t think I would get any insight about my finances from playing “Bubble Breaker” on my Palm Treo. It seems like a complete waste of time but overall, I see playing games on my phone as a time passer – waiting at the doctor’s office to be seen or waiting for a phone call. These little pockets of time don’t give me enough time to get something done and I hate to get deep into an article I can’t finish because I will always wonder what the outcome was. So I play Bubble Breaker on my phone. Even when I changed to a new phone, I keep the old one without a Sim card to play this goofy game.
Here is how it works – you group together the bubbles by color. The more bubbles you connect, the more points you get. For example, if you have 8 bubbles of the same color together, you get 56 points. If you group 13 together of the same color, you get 156 points – one hundred points more with those extra five bubbles. When I first started, I didn’t realize the huge impact of the big moves and I used to care about the little groupings of 3 or 5 bubbles. I spent a great deal of time with not much to show for it. Then once I realized how the game scored, I changed my focus. Richard Carlson, the author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff would be proud. I sacrificed all the little small ones and focused completely on the high payoff items. My scores went from the 200’s to the 600’s in Bubble Breaker.
I am sure these are still pretty low if I were going head to head in a Bubble Breaker competition but if I were to win the title of Champion Bubble Breaker, I would have spent way too much time to get there which is the point of this blog. The point I am finally getting around to is: where are you spending your time on your finances? Where do you focus your attention – the mundane or the high payoff?
Focus your attention on the decisions with the big payoffs. For example, I may run all over town trying to get the best interest rate on my emergency money sitting in a money market. In today’s interest rate environment, that is a complete waste of time. Interest rates are low so financial institution’s rates aren’t going to be that different. All the research in the world and all the negotiating with your banker, won’t do much good. As I am writing this blog, money market rates are about .8 – 1%. Is this activity going to give me a big payoff? Probably not.
Instead I may focus on paying off debt. With the average credit card charging about 14% on my outstanding balance, putting together a plan to pay off my debt is a much bigger payoff than calling about money market rates. This move would make a much bigger impact on my finances.
Let’s look at it:
1. Money market rate run around – If I have $10,000 in a money market and I was able to find a rate that is .2% higher than my current bank, I would earn $20.00 more in one year.
2. Paying off credit card – If I sat down and devised a plan to pay off my $10,000 in credit card debt with an interest rate of 14%, such as taking the $10,000 from savings to pay off the credit card and then setting up automatic transfers from checking to savings for the amount I was paying on the card to rebuild my savings, I would save $1400 in interest charges for the year.
Obviously #2 has the most impact on my finances and the biggest payoff for time well spent.
Consider these questions:
What financial tasks bring you a low payoff or are basically time wasters?
What are some financial moves that will make a big impact on your finances?
Then change your focus to the high pay off moves.
By the way, does anyone play “word mole” on their BlackBerry? I can’t seem to get past 3100 points. 🙂