Boring People Have the Best Lives
By: Rocco Pendola
Tags: Money, Budget, Personal Finance, Quarantine, Self

How do you keep positive change intact?

In the world we used to live in, I gotta be honest. I’m not sure it was possible. The pandemic forced life into a state of necessary boredom. We had no choice but to be bored for a minute, then figure out how to not be bored for the next nine months and counting.

Or we had to figure out how to make what used to seem boring not seem so boring after all.

For the first three days of quarantine, I cycled through bouts of depression and old school boredom. On day four, I said, “screw it,” and put my arms around the reset. If you were lucky enough to do; likewise, you likely went to one of the two extremes it feels like many other people went to.

The extreme of getting in better physical, mental, and financial shape rather than the extreme of binging your vices more than ever and putting the uncomfortable thought of money issues out of sight, out of mind.

You can’t overstate the unprecedented nature of this reset. The pandemic removed readily available temptations. For a while, it was difficult to fail. Difficult, though not impossible.

For example, while you couldn’t physically drink and dine inside bars and restaurants, you could have opted for takeout and delivery. I partake from time to time, but I know people who have made this a nightly ritual. To each their own, but by opting out of the takeout/delivery craze, I maintained the $1,600 in monthly savings I discovered as a result the pandemic closing bars and restaurants. Had I gone in the opposite direction, I likely would have wound up spending more on food and drink during the pandemic than I did before it.

Relative to the life I knew before, this is boring. There’s something inherently not boring about being in a good bar or restaurant. Rewire your mind to get past this. Create new personal conceptions of reality and boredom. Wrap your head around the idea of giving up something in one area to get something you want more in another area.

Compromise.

Here’s what I did to make the $1,600 monthly surplus sustainable:

I kept my daily coffee shop habit and tip $2 every time.

I indulge in a breakfast burrito from the great CoFax in Los Angeles every other week. (They’re not paying me for the mention. I just love the place).

I worked weed and edibles back into my life.

If this sounds weird (to you), I guess it is (to you). However, in my little world, it makes perfect sense. And it reinforces one of the personal-finance mantras we can’t repeat enough:

If you don’t consider psychological factors as you budget, spend, save, and invest your money, there’s a good chance you’ll end up screwed. It’s not enough to merely acknowledge that psychology influences and impacts your decisions. Get in touch with who you are, why you feel the way you do, and why you act and react this way or that way in response to personal finance and investing decisions.

This is the key to not only embracing and maintaining change but embracing and maintaining boredom. Some general, catch-all psychological approach to personal finance doesn’t work. You’ve gotta individualize it. You’ve gotta craft your psychological approach to personal finance in the image of your unique quirks and eccentricities.

I love going to the coffee shop. It makes me happy. Happy makes me creative. Creativity makes me productive. I believe in tipping bartenders, servers, and baristas relatively well. I get something out of it.

I nixed most carbs from my diet. But I love a good breakfast burrito. Nobody does it better than CoFax. I needed this bi-weekly ritual — this treat — in my life. It helps keep me satisfied.

I enjoy what THC and CBD do to my body and mind. They help me relax. Their effects (I surmise) help keep me relaxed even when I’m not actively consuming them.

These seemingly little things add up for me. They make me feel like I’m getting something in return for what the pandemic forced me to give up. They make me feel like when what I “lost” comes back online (the ability to visit and work in a bar or restaurant), I will reenter the fray in moderation. Moderation in the frequency of my visits, how much time I spend in the settings, and how much money I spend when in the settings.

Had I gone cold turkey — forced or not — without considering replacement activities and how they fit into my peculiar psychology, I would probably be experiencing more difficulty sticking to the positive choices I made early in quarantine.

All of this before even mentioning the actual financial benefits:

I’m able to incrementally fill and maintain my various pots of money. I’ve never been better at allocating income.

My investing has never looked or felt better. I’m making sounder choices than ever (knock on wood) in what is a boring but ultimately lucrative dividend stock portfolio.

I feel more financially secure than I ever have in my life. (Also, knock on wood). In and of itself, this should, more than anything, make me want to stay the course.

A boring existence doesn’t feel all that boring when you make the types of trades I outline in this article and bask in their afterglow. But it’s also nice and effective to get excited about the other things you’re doing by positively associating them with what you’re no longer doing. It’s a mental dance you create for yourself that only you can understand.

This decidedly psychological approach has helped me appreciate other boring aspects of quarantine life. Taking long neighborhood walks. Going on hikes. Watching TV shows in binge mode. Listening to music more often. Reading and rereading books. Spending quality time (while abiding by public health protocols) with the friends (one or two at a time) who remain front and center during this still strange time.

Taken together, this is little more than a holistic approach. A comprehensive plan of attack to not merely make change, but do everything in my power to not turn my back on this change and revert to my old ways.

Some people might call this overthinking. They might think I’m nuts. That what I write doesn’t make sense. I hope it makes sense to you. However, if it doesn’t, that’s probably okay. It doesn’t have to make specific sense because you’re not going to do exactly what I do.

You can treat this article like an outline. Go back and replace my bullet points and other actionable items with your own. You can take my specific back to general, then recast it as your specific.

One thing holds true in the waters between my specific and your specific. You can’t half-ass the marriage between the practical and psychological when reorganizing your personal financial situation.

Be obsessed. Be particular. Be nerdy. Be your version of weird. Be an over-thinker. Be a tinkerer. Be particular. Be your own mediator. Be boring. Be better with money. Be sure to make it stick as we prepare to hit the gas in 2021.