Doing the dishes by hand and the most important life lesson ever.

I’ve learned an incredible life lesson all thanks to my dirty dishes.

We don’t have a dishwasher. ( <—— This is important for the story.)

We clean each dish, fork, spoon, and knife by hand.

When you don’t have a dishwasher, the worst decision you can make is to let the dirty dishes pile up, even for one day.

You’ll regret it the rest of your life!

I once let the dishes go from Friday to Sunday night. I laid down on the cold kitchen floor and cried like a drug addict for an hour before sucking it up and taking care of business. Worst three hours of my life. Never again.

Do the dishes early and often.

When there are only ten pieces to wash, it goes fast and it’s easy.

When both sides of the sink and half the counter are full of dirty dishes, it sucks and it takes forever.

The more dirty dishes there are, the less motivated I am to do them. It’s the worst inverse relationship of them all.

“The relationship between two variables is an inverse relationship if when one increases the other decreases.”

Every time I walk into the kitchen, I do the dishes. I especially make sure I do them when there’s only like 4 or 5 pieces to wash. Waiting until there are more is a mistake!!

No machine will wash your money for you.

Let’s apply this amazing life lesson to money.

The more often you budget, pay bills, organize your debts, and track your net worth, the better.

When you start to let it go, the motivation starts to dwindle. When the money to-do list starts to grow, the incentive to just look the other way grows.

If you want those dishes cleaned, look no further than your two hands.

If you want your bank account in order, look no further than your two hands.

No one is coming along to do it for you.

And the sooner (and more often) you get to it, the better you will feel about it.

Perhaps there is a dishwasher of sorts for your money? Or at least a sponge you can use.

I’m looking forward to the day when we again have a dishwasher. It might be years! (If we decide to buy the house we are currently renting AND do a kitchen remodel! Kill me now!)

A dishwasher would make things easier. I could even let the dishes stack up for a day or two.

There’s nothing wrong with a little help in the kitchen and there’s nothing wrong with a little help in your budget either.

I use Tiller to do our budget. (It’s like a dishwasher! Sorta.)

Tiller automatically pulls your banking transactions everyday and throws them into a Google Sheet.

From there you can easily and quickly categorize each transaction and work your monthly budget.

I’ve created a spreadsheet that includes a debt snowball, savings worksheet and even a net worth tracker!

Here’s my suggestion… (This takes about 15 minutes.)

• Create an account with Tiller
• Link your bank account
• Open the sheet called How Do I Budget
• Categorize a few expenses just to see how it works. (This will all makes sense once you’re in there.)
• (Optional) Watch the videos that show you how it all works! (Tiller is easy enough to just jump in a go, but for those who want a little help, the videos are there for you.)

Don’t let the financial dishes pile up.

Get in there and get your hands wet!

Clean your bank account early and often.

-Derek

P.S. I’ve heard this “early and often” lesson works for exercising and eating healthy too!