Moneyball Your Life

I wrote yesterday about how Billy Beane, the G.M. of the Oakland A’s never watches his team play because he doesn’t want to become biased by what he see’s, knowing that emotion can take over and cloud out honest evaluation. (The book gives a much better picture of this than the movie.)

And I talked about moneyballing your church – finding ways to develop an honest, unbiased evaluation of your church.

I also think we need to moneyball our lives. Because emotion tends to lead us into bad decisions.

• You go out on Black Friday to buy a few Christmas presents for your kid, but see a deal on a huge TV – for $1,000 rather than it’s normal $2,000 – so you buy it. Problem – you end up paying it off one credit card payment at a time, and with interest spend … yeah, $2,000 on it.
• You meet a guy who is really good looking and cool and interested in you, so you start to date him. Problem – he’s not a Christian.
• You get an extra unexpected $200 so you decide to splurge and go out to a fancy restaurant. Problem – your car needs new tires and you have no money in savings.

So how do you moneyball your life? Well, one strategy is to make unemotional decisions before you’re in the emotional moment of the decision.

• You create a financial plan that sets in advance where every dollar (including unexpected one’s) will go. (Our family has a budget not only for our income, but also a plan for where we put any extra income.)
• You make a list of exactly what you’re looking for in a future husband, and therefore a current boyfriend. Like, (1) He must be a passionate, growing Christian, (2) He must have a job, (3) He must have a sense of humor.

So how could you moneyball your life? Where do you need to do this? The end of a year is a great time to make these kinds of in-advance decisions!