Ten seconds a day

The practical part of this book has two habits in it. This chapter is about the smaller one, because it's the one that changes how looking feels.

The habit is to look at your bank balance every day for about ten seconds.

You don't analyse it, plan with it or add anything up. You open the app, look at the balance, glance down the last few transactions to see that you recognise them, and close it.

Here's why it's daily, and why it's so short.

At present, looking is a rare event. It happens when something has gone wrong, or on payday, or a few times a year when you steel yourself. Because it's rare, a lot rides on it. Three weeks of unknown spending get revealed in one go. The number could be anything. That's what makes your stomach tighten. You've set things up so that every look is a big reveal.

If you looked yesterday, today's look can't surprise you much. You know what the number was. You have a fair idea of what's happened since. Today's number will be yesterday's number, less the shopping. There's no reveal and so there's little to dread. After a fortnight of this, the app is just something you open, like the weather. This is the principle from chapter 6. Frequent, brief, uneventful contact wears the fear down. I'm applying it on my own reasoning, but it matches what people report.

The daily look also gives you the benefit from chapter 5. You'll see on the 9th that the month is running hot. The forgotten subscription will show up on the day it's taken, and so will a transaction you don't recognise. You don't need to do anything clever in response. Noticing is most of it. People who see their balance every day tend to adjust without making any formal decision to. Harkin's review of monitoring, in chapter 5, is the evidence that this kind of effect is real.

Attach it to something you already do every morning. It might be the kettle, the train or the first sit-down at your desk. The cue should be daily and early. If you look in the morning, there's a day ahead in which to act on what you see. A look at bedtime gives you a night to worry about it.

A few practical points.

If you have more than one account, look at the one your daily spending comes from. The others can wait for the weekly look in chapter 12.

Most banking apps can send a notification when your balance falls below a figure you choose, or when a payment is about to take you overdrawn. I haven't surveyed which banks offer what, so look in your app's settings. An alert is a useful safety net. It isn't a substitute for looking, because it only tells you about one kind of problem.

If you don't use an app, the same habit works with online banking, or with a balance by text message if your bank offers that. If you bank entirely on paper, a daily look isn't possible. The weekly look will have to do the work, along with opening every statement on arrival.

If opening the app on a given morning feels impossible, notice that, and open it anyway for the ten seconds. That feeling is strongest just before you look, and it fades a few seconds after. The days when you least want to look are usually the days when it's most useful.

For the first week or two, some mornings will be unpleasant. You may see a number you don't like. That's the rough idea being corrected, and the discomfort passes. Once you've seen the number it's smaller than the dread was, as chapter 4 argued, and from then on you're working with what's true.