Today is both International Women’s Day and the last day of Women’s Money Week. Thanks so much to Jackie and Elizabeth for hosting once again. It’s been an honor to participate. Look for my favorite post from each day in tomorrow’s round up.

The theme for Friday is Future Planning and Financial Planning

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

As an undergrad, I majored in History, so it should not be surprising that I am a firm believer in knowing where you have been. When it comes to personal finances, I think understanding your past is the key to planning a successful future.

One of my earliest posts was A Budget is NOT the first thing you need, and it’s advice I stand by now. I can create a budget that requires me to spend less than $75 at CostCo, but if I’ve never been able to get out of that store for less than $100, I am going to fail. I cannot plan for success if I ignore all of my past’s failures.

We have to admit the truth to ourselves. We are where we are in life because of our past, because of the mistakes and the right decisions, the bad luck and strokes of good fortune. If we can be honest with ourselves about where we came from, then we have a much better chance of making the changes we need to make to get where we want to go.

Your paths in life, whether they be career, financial, or otherwise, need to include ways to play up your strengths and work around your weaknesses. None of us is ever going to be perfect, but if we can admit to ourselves where we are likely to fail, then we can build safety rails into our plans.

People who know they simply cannot manage their credit cards responsibly cut them up, or store them literally frozen in a block of ice, for emergency purposes only. They do this despite knowing that you can come out ahead financially by playing the credit card rewards game. Because for them, having the card available is too much temptation to resist, so they take it off the table.

I know that I cannot handle cash responsibly. I just can’t. If it’s not in the bank account, it’s already spent in my mind. So when I have cash, it trickles through my fingers, a little here, a little there, and then it’s gone, and I cannot honestly tell you what I spent it all on. Knowing this about myself means I will never use the “envelope” system, where people pull cash out of their accounts for all their monthly needs and just spend from that. I could try to force it to work, but I would just end up mad at myself every single month when the cash ran short.

I also know that if I force myself to go too long without spending a little something on myself- be it going out to dinner or getting a pedicure, there will come a day when I fall off the wagon big time and go spend more than a few hundred on me. I’ll be mad at myself, unhappy with what I bought, and further in the hole I was trying to dig myself out of. So instead, I built an allowance into my budget. It’s not a lot of money each month, but it’s enough to let me do something for me every month, or save for a couple of months for something big. Because I know that I have the option, I don’t feel trapped.

I apply the same thinking to planning the next step in my career. When I am looking at job postings, I cannot just ask myself “can I do this”. I also have to ask “will I enjoy doing this”. Because if I won’t, I will be miserable in that job. I have taken enough jobs in the past just because I needed the job to know this. I’ve quite jobs with absolutely no future job prospects because I was so miserable where I was. I do not want to put myself in that same position again.

So when you’re sitting down to plan out your future, be it your budget, big financial plan, or next step in your career ladder, be honest with yourself about where you have been and how that shapes where you want to go. After all, your past successes and failures are what made you who you are today, and I’ll bet you’re pretty awesome.

Has it really been a year? It is time, once again, for Women’s Money Week. Let me be honest, everything I say in any of these posts applies to men as well as women, but I do think it is important to have events that focus on women and their relationships with money. Why? Because in a lot of ways, men are still seen as the bread winners and financial decision makers. It is less true than it once was, but it is still there. And the research has shown, over and over again, that in order for people to believe they can succeed at something , they need to see people LIKE THEM doing it. And since talking about money still seems to be taboo in everyday life, we need events like this to remind people- you can do this. And if you have questions- ask.

The theme for Tuesday is Finding Time and Increasing Productivity. Go here to see links to everyone who has participated in today’s theme.

For those of you who don’t know, I also write a pet blog called Life by Pets. Earlier this year, I participated in something called the Pet Blogger Challenge, which is more about us as bloggers than about our pets at all. One of the questions that kept coming up throughout the challenge posts had to do with how people managed their blogging time, that it seemed like there was always too much to do.

I answered as best I could with the following advice:

Secret 1- I don’t try to be perfect. While my blogs are mostly supposed to run at specific times on specific days of the week, if something comes up, I try not to stress about it. A trip to the dog park is more important that making my 4:30pm(Pacific) publishing time on Dog Ate My Wallet. Getting the grocery shopping done takes priority over getting Saturday’s blog round-up posted. And if I skip a day on 100 Words On, then I skip a day.

Secret 2- I don’t try to do everything. Both Life by Pets and Dog Ate My Wallet have pretty long blog rolls, if you go to the Complete Blogroll and Links pages. I tried reading every single one of those blogs on a regular basis, and I couldn’t do it. Instead, you’ll notice on the sidebar, the blogroll there only have 15 blogs listed at a time. The widget displays them randomly, so I have no control over what blogs are on there at any given time. My goal is to read the 15 blogs that are listed on that sidebar twice a week for each of my blogs. Mondays & Wednesdays I read personal finance blogs. Tuesdays & Thursdays I read pet blogs. That’s 60 blogs a week. If some of my favorite blogs don’t show up on the blogrolls on those days, on Fridays, I’ll go read those. Still, I’m at less than 70 blogs a week.

Secret 3- I only comment when I have something to say. I probably should comment more. I know I love it when I get comments. At the same time, I am busy. I am the sole breadwinner. I run three regular blogs and a 4th “when the inspiration strikes” blog. I write fiction. I have three dogs that need to be taken care. And sometimes, I’d like to just spend some time hanging out with C. So I don’t force myself to comment if I don’t have anything to say. I hope that means that when I do comment, I am adding to the conversation, or at least expressing my sincere thoughts/reactions.

While my detailed answers dealt specifically with blogging, I think the general answers apply everywhere.

Secret 1- I don’t try to be perfect. That’s not quite true, some things I do try to be perfect on, but those are a very few select things. I accept that many things can fall into the category of “good enough”. The dogs don’t need 90 minutes at the dog park every day. Sometimes, they have to settle for a 15 minute walk. Clean dishes can remain in the dishwasher for an extra day, and bedding can remain in the dryer until someone else needs to do laundry or I feel like putting it away. I have to accept that my priorities may not match what other people (including my mother) think they should be, and be okay with that.

Secret 2- I don’t try to do everything. I am responsible for dinner only one night a week in my house. Otherwise, husband C or roommate J are on deck for feeding us all. J will often do last minute runs to the grocery store, or feed the dogs if we have to leave the house before their normal dinner time. I have learned to ask for help when I need it. I am still working on this, but I am getting better. Instead of pushing myself to the brink of exhaustion and making myself sick, I ask someone else to put away the dishes.

Secret 3 – I only comment when I have something to say. That’s pretty blogging specific, but I think can easily be changed to: I only schedule time for those things that are my priorities. We have no set schedule for doing laundry or vacuuming the house. Those things get done as they need to. (It’s part of not being perfect.) However, activities that are important to me get put on a schedule. I go to my writing critique group every other Sunday. I show up over an hour early to guarantee myself writing time. C and I go grocery shopping together every Friday afternoon. (Okay, sometimes that gets pushed to Saturday, but we still shop together 95% of the time.) We plan major home projects in advance. Get togethers with friends are put on the calendar, and we arrange the rest of our schedule around them. If it is not important enough to me that I will schedule a specific day or time to do something, than I accept that sometimes whatever it is might fall through the cracks.

Here’s the thing about my “secrets”, they allow me to spend time where I think it is most important, and allow me to not beat myself up when my house is a little messier than I’d like, or it takes a week to put the laundry away. Because I know that I am focusing my time and my productivity on the items that truly matter to me, I don’t stress as much about everything else.