Personal Finance Advice

I’m making an assumption that you really shouldn’t be reading this post because, well, you’re doing exactly what you shouldn’t be doing. If you were looking for specific information to help you with your finances, you should be reading about that topic rather than this post about why you shouldn’t be reading this post.

One of the biggest obstacles that people need to overcome when getting their finances in order is their urge to procrastinate. Not taking the financial steps you know you should be taking today can result in such unnecessary expenses as late penalty fees, making unnecessary purchases or simply paying more for the things you need. Most people know what they need to do to get their finances in order, but because they know it will not always be a pleasant experience, they choose to procrastinate instead of doing what they know that they should be doing.

I assume that if you have read this far, you have already decided to continue in your current procrastination mode. If so, maybe some of these quotes will help you out of it and convince you that now is the time to take charge and do all those things know you should be doing, but have been delaying:

1. “Procrastination is like masturbation. At first it feels good, but in the end you’re only screwing yourself.” – Unknown

2. “I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by.” – Douglas Adams

3. “Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” – Christopher Parker

4. “Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea? Nothing!” – Donald Gardner

5. “Even if you’re on the right track – you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

6. “We don’t have anything as urgent as manana in Ireland.” – Stuart Banks

7. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.” – Wayne Dyer

8. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln

9. “Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young

10. “The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.” – Unknown

11. “If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.” – Unknown

12. “I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” – Jerome K. Jerome

13. “Procrastination gives you something to look forward to.” – Joan Konner

14. “Anger is the only thing to put off till tomorrow.” – Slovakian proverb

15. “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” – Robert Benchley

16. “Avoid delays: procrastination always does harm.” – Lucanus

17.”A year from now you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb

18. “Begin while others are procrastinating. Work while others are wishing.” – William Arthur Ward

19. “Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.” – Miguel De Cervantes

20. “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.” – C. Northcote Parkinson

21. “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” – M. Scott Peck

22. “Do nothing by halves which can be done by quarters.” – F. R. Scott

23. “Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.” – Hesiod

24. “Don’t fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all.” – Mignon McLaughlin

25. “Don’t procrastinate. Putting off an unpleasant task until tomorrow simply gives you more time for your imagination to make a mountain out a possible molehill. More time for anxiety to sap your self-confidence. Do it now, brother, do it now.” – Unknown

26. “Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.” – Charles Richter

27. “Don’t wait for someone to take you under their wing. Find a good wing and climb up underneath it.” – Frank C. Bucaro

28. “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill

29. “Do or do not do. There is no try.” – Yoda

30. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” – Dale Carnegie

31. “During a very busy life I have often been asked, ‘How did you manage to do it all?’ The answer is very simple. It is because I did everything promptly.” – Richard Tangye

32. “Even if you’re on the right track – you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Arthur Godfrey

33. “Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.” – Charles Kingsley

34. “He who awaits much can expect little.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

35. “He who begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.” – Horace

36. “He who hesitates is last.” – Mae West

37. “He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” – Horace

38. “He who puts off nothing till tomorrow has done a great deal.” – Baltasar Graci

39. “He who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking, will never accomplish anything.” – Martin Luther

40. “How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.” – Fred Brooks

41. “How soon not now, becomes never.” – Martin Luther King

42. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

43. “I do my work at the same time each day – the last minute.” – Unknown

44. “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” – Pearl S. Buck

45. “If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.” – Lee Iacocca

46. “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” – Olin Miller

47. “I’m going to stop putting things off, starting tomorrow!” – Sam Levenson

48. “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

49. “In delay there lies no plenty.” – William Shakespeare

50. “Initiative – take it, rather than procrastinate.” – Catherine Pulsifer

51. “In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful” – Mark Anthony

52. “It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.” -Earl of Chesterfield

53. “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Seneca

54. “It’s a job that’s never started that takes the longest to finish.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

55. “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” – Lord Chesterfield

56. “Live, drink be, merry, love the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow ye may die, but alas we never do.” – Dorothy Parker

57. “Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.” – David Allen

58. “My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ’til a more convenient season.” – Mary Todd Lincoln

59. “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” – Benjamin Franklin

60. “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” – Mark Twain

61. “Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing so futile.” – Bertrand Russell

62. “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” – William James

63. “Nothing is so perilous as procrastination” – John Lyly

64. “One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.” – Vincent T. Foss

65. “One of these days is none of these days.” – Henri Tubach and H.G. Bohn

66. “Postpone: not a good action.” – Irish Proverb

67. “Procrastination: A hardening of the oughteries.” – Unknown

68. “Procrastination has robbed us of too many opportunities” – Sarah Ban Breathnach

69. “Procrastination is a sin of lawyers, trial judges, reporters, appellate judges, in brief, everyone connected with the machinery of criminal law.” – Macklin Fleming

70. “Procrastination is, hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage.” – Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

71. “Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will – tomorrow!” – Gloria Pitzer

72. “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” – Wayne Dyer

73. “Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin.” – Victor Kiam

74. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.” – Wayne Dyer

75. “Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” – Napoleon Hill

76. “Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the ‘someday I’ll philosophy.’” – Denis Waitley

77. “Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.” – Unknown

78. “Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young

79. “Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow” – Unknown

80. “Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off until tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time.” – Ida Scott Taylor

81. “Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.” – George Claude Lorimer

82. “Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.” – Sandra Day O’Connor

83. “Someday is not a day of the week.” – Unknown

84. “So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.” – Lee Iacocca

85. “Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.” – John Andrew Holmes

86. “Stop talking. Start walking.” – L.M. Heroux

87. “The best way to get something done is to begin.” – Unknown

88. “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” – Winston Churchill

89. “The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.” – Dawson Trotman

90. “The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day.” – Abraham Lincoln

91. “The opportunity often slips away while we deliberate on it.” – Syrus

92. “The time to begin most things is ten years ago.” – Mignon McLaughlin

93. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Sally Berger

94. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” – Mark Twain

95. “The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.” – Unknown

96. “The two rules of procrastination: 1) Do it today. 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow.” – Unknown

97. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

98. “There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.” -Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

99. “There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house.” – Joe Ryan

100. “This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.” – General Omar Bradley

101. “To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as…to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you’re dead.” – Og Mandino

102. “Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” – Spanish Proverb

103. “Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.” – Jimmy Lyons

104. “Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform.” – Edward Young

105. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” – Eva Young

106. “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck

107. “Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don’t count.” – Dr. Robert Anthony

108. “Watching for things to appreciate and expressing that appreciation immediately benefits both our relationships and us. It is taking care of business on a daily basis so that we have a better chance of not having a lot of unfinished business when we least expect it.” – Gail Pursell Elliott

109. “We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it?” – Buddha

110. “We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going day in and day out. Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.” – Arnold Bennett

111.”What may be done at any time will be done at no time.” – Scottish Proverb

112. “When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it smaller.” – Unknown

113. “When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.” – William James

114. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” – C. Northcote Parkinson

115. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

116. “You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.” – Unknown

117. “You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin

If you are still reading this post, the decision is now yours. Do you continue to procrastinate or do you decide to begin taking the steps to get your finances in order as well as achieve all your other goals? I can guarantee it won’t happen rereading this page…