April 12, 2016  |   

Thanks to the media we live in a very YOLO society. If you are not familiar with the term YOLO, let me explain.

YOLO – “You Only Live Once!”

Everyone is about having the most luxury cars, living in the biggest house, wearing the nicest clothes and making it rain with money (figuratively and literally).

Keeping up with the Jones’ right?

But what we all don’t realize is that while living a frivolous lifestyle is fun, it’s not something you can bet on for your future. I know, you are probably thinking “well obviously”! But you should really ask yourself when was the last time you decided to skip out on that movie you really wanted to see because you already used up your entertainment budget?

Yahoo finance touched on this in a great way identifying if you are living beyond your means with these eight signs:

  1. You let FOMO (Fear Of Mission Out) dictate your spending
  2. You carry a balance on your credit card
  3. You are not saving at least 5 percent
  4. You have no emergency fund
  5. You are leasing a car you cannot afford
  6. You do not have any money left at the end of the month
  7. You have paid an overdraft fee
  8. You never set a budget

They even recommend going all cash for one month to visualize how much you are really overspending.

Now you don’t need to give up your entire YOLO lifestyle. I mean it is in fact true that you only live once. But make sure that ten, twenty or even thirty years down the road that you still have money to truly live. Not just survive!

Based off of Yahoo Finances eight identifiers, how do your spending habits measure up? What do you plan to do to fix it? Let us know in the comments.