“It’s Only” expenses are the silent killers of your finances. They sneak into your wallet because, in the moment, the rationalization is just so incredibly easy.
They usually take four shapes:
- The “Relative” It’s-Only: Adding $25,000 to a home purchase or $2,000 for the luxury trim on a new car. You’re already spending a mountain of cash, so what’s a few more bucks? (I’m guilty of both.)
- The “Throw-Away” It’s-Only: The $10 on-sale Xbox game. I’ll definitely play that someday. (Spoiler: It will take me three lifetimes to play through the gaming library I already own.)
- The “Forgotten” It’s-Only: The phantom subscriptions. You see it on your statement and think, “I have three weeks to cancel before the next charge hits.” You won’t. I won’t. We never do.
- The “Bleeding” It’s-Only: These arrive with massive life events like weddings or home renovations. When you spend that much money, you get financial dysmorphia. Once you’ve dropped $15,000 on kitchen cabinets, spending $150 on Tuesday night sushi suddenly feels like pocket change. The spending bleeds into everything.
I know these intimately because I’ve fallen for all of them. But simply knowing they exist isn’t enough to stop them. (I know exactly the steps required to get six-pack abs… and yet, here we are.)
But here is the universal truth of achieving Financial Zen: What gets measured gets managed.
After completely falling off my own tracking wagon for the last 12 months, I finally climbed back on. Taking just a few minutes a week to review my transactions in my Financial Zen Portal immediately highlighted my wasteful “It’s-Onlys” and stopped the bleeding.
The secret to not going broke by a thousand “It’s-Onlys” is forcing yourself to look at the cuts.
If you force yourself to log a cupcake in a calorie tracker every single day, the sheer awareness will eventually make you put down the cupcake. The exact same rule applies to your money.
Start tracking. Magical things happen from there.