I started doing deliveries in my car and needed to charge my phone while on the move. Plugging in my phone actually drained my battery. Other drivers were able to charge their phones in their cars, what was the problem? I decided that the Lincoln was old so it must not be putting out the right amount of power and forgot all about it. When I needed to charge my phone I just did it at home.
Recently I bought a new car. I brought my old car charger with me. My new car has a USB slot built right into the dash. It will charge my phone just fine but I filled up a thumb drive with music so I needed to use old car charger for charging my phone. Even with the new vehicle the car charger drained my battery. That makes no sense.
I looked into it and the E-cigarette car charger has a lower voltage level than a traditional car charger. E-cigarette batteries were blowing up when charged at a higher voltage level so they made this custom one just for their batteries at a lower voltage. When I discovered this I went to dollar tree and picked up a proper charger with a higher voltage for $1.06. It charges the phone just as fast as plugging it into the wall.
I had a suspicion that it was the car charger for years yet I took no action to fix the problem. Why? It is because my default mode is:
Do not spend money.
When you are so focused on not spending money you often make do with things that don't make sense then justify it later with fuzzy logic. You create a habit of saying no. You convince yourself that saving a few dollars is worth having a non-functional phone charger in your car for years when you could spend a dollar to get one that works. The never spend mindset has a cost too. My desire to save money overrode logic and my desire to find an actual solution to this problem.
The real danger is that you begin to accept the idea of things being good enough or even subpar if you can save a few dollars. Saying no all the time is harmful if it's your default thinking. It spills over into other areas of your life.
I have been losing some weight lately. When I was at my heaviest I told myself, why buy new clothing now? I'm planning on losing some weight so I'll buy some when I get thinner. Now I am a little thinner and some of my shirts and pants are too big. Not huge but they don't quite fit right. I have been telling myself, those are perfectly good shirts, I should wait until I have lost a few more pounds until I buy some new clothing. When I get down to the weight I want, what excuse will I tell myself then? This system is cursing me to constantly wear ill-fitting old clothing. It's easy to talk yourself into anything. Each step seems harmless but taken as a whole the process leads to a bad outcome.
I need to shift my thinking. I have decided that good enough is not good enough. I can still be responsible in my spending and stop fooling myself at the same time. Famous Psychologist Jordan Peterson has a rule in his book "12 rules for life" that says, "treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping." Would I let someone I care about drive around in a car that was breaking down all the time? Of course not. Then why would I let myself do it? I allowed myself to do that for the last couple years. I knew I needed to make a change but I didn't because I thought I could save money. In the end it cost me more to maintain the old car than to buy a new used car. It also cost me a lot in stress and emotional energy.
I want to be able to say yes more. This is my new default mode. How can I afford this? Instead of a no followed with a bunch of logical sounding excuses.
