Saying ‘no’ is sometimes a good thing!

Dave Ramsey often talks about a very old word that isn’t used very often. He calls the word archaic. The word when used correctly has great power to fix certain things. The word when used at the right time can save you years of pain. The word is “No”.

Too often, when faced with a decision that isn’t part of our financial plan, we make a bad choice and purchase something that we regret the next day when we should have said ‘no’. One of the (many) things Dave Ramsey teaches in Financial Peace University is the idea of evaluating the impact of making a major purchase. What else could you do with that money? Do you really need the item or service or is it just something you want? First, let me say that I am not against anyone buying things for themselves. Nor am I against anyone buying things that they simply want. If you plan for the purchase and pay cash for it, I have no problem. What I am mainly talking about is impulse purchases or purchases that are done out of justification instead of planning.

One of the most often used techniques that leads to a bad purchase is to justify how the result will be a good thing. Justification is a very powerful emotion/action that can lead to some very bad decisions.

There are many examples in the Bible where someone justified a decision, and that decision lead to some very bad results. For example, one of the first things that God told King Saul to do was to destroy the Amalekites. God, being God, knew that the Amalekites would never be friends of Israel, so He commanded Saul to destroy the entire nation and everything they owned. Saul did defeat the Amalekites, but he brought back some of the spoils of the battle and he left some people alive. Saul justified his decisions by saying that the spoils would be an offering to God. That would have been a great decision, if God had not told him to destroy everything. Saul justified a bad decision as being a good idea, and let’s just say that God wasn’t very happy with Saul’s decision. You can read the story for yourself and see how Saul’s decision turns out.

Recently, another “good idea” was floated in the New Jersey state Assembly. The Assembly passed a bill that would raise taxes on 16,000 of New Jersey’s wealthiest citizens. The idea is that the money raised by this new tax (about $600 million) would be used to provide rebates to senior citizens on their property taxes. That sounds like a really good idea, when you look at only that part of the debate. The other side is that New Jersey is already spending more money than they bring in. As a state they have a mountain of debt, and instead of using the $600 million to pay down debt, they want to give it away as more government spending that will simply increase the budget problems they are already dealing with. The bigger problem with this decision is the idea that a very small block of people in New Jersey would have money taken away from them and their money given to others. The governor of New Jersey said ‘No’ and vetoed the bill. His plan is to cut spending across the board and lower taxes whenever possible. It is fair to say that Governor Christie is both loved and hated right now.

These types of tough decisions are exactly the type of decisions that everyone has to make in order to right their sinking financial ship. Saying no to certain things is the first step in fixing years of bad financial decisions. However, years of bad decisions can’t be corrected overnight. There will be many opportunities to say no, on the road to financial recovery. The first step is to stop justifying bad decisions…just say no.