You know what really grinds my gears?

 

It’s when people start accusing me of having OCD while I think it’s just tidiness and punctuality.  And it doesn’t have to be something related to financial matters. Lately, people have been accusing me of having OCD over silliest things.

It usually goes along these lines:

 

- Hey, how come your car is so clean and tidy?

- Cause I clean it regularly. And keep it tidy.

- Whoa, it’s like you have OCD or something.

 

And in financial matters it’s even worse:

 

- Darn, my bank charged me interest again because I was late with my Visa payment. I have worst luck ever with money. Don’t you hate when it happens to you?

- No, I pay all of my bills on time.

- Dude, you must be suffering from OCD.

 

For some reason, it’s always younger people who accuse me of having OCD while all I am doing is keeping things in order.

Now, I’m not saying I’m old or anything, but lately I’ve been more and more associating myself with Red Forman of That’s 70’s show. Because while I do get along with people in their 20’s without major problems (even with people who have weird loopy things in their ears and say things like “oh, whatever man, that’s lame”), some of the stuff they express really raises my eyebrows. I’m not quite in “get off my lawn you dang kids” stage yet, but at the same time I have some rather strong opinions about some of them.

 

 

 

Here comes one:

 

Young people! Let me explain something to you. Sometimes what you refer to as “being OCD” isn’t OCD at all. Sometimes it’s just common sense and good old fashioned punctuality. Having things in order and doing things on time isn’t actually signs of OCD, it’s more sign of maturity. And you don’t have to be old to become mature and punctual with your life – heck, I know some 20 year olds who have “OCD”.

Sometimes people blame their money problems on having “bad luck”. Like, this unexpected bill just shows up out of nowhere and because of bad luck it happens exactly when you have $1.70 in your bank account. But let’s be honest, it has very little with luck and more with people not paying attention to their finances and keeping track of their bills and accounts. Once again, you don’t have to have OCD to pay attention to numbers and accounts. You just have to be a bit more adult.

But I’m not going to just sit here and bash young people for not being mature. As a younger person myself, I’ve been on receiving end of countless “walking eight miles to school in snow” stories. Being a helpful individual, I even came up with some examples what does and what doesn’t constitutes OCD in our day and age. This way next time you’re about to accuse somebody of having OCD, you can consult this simple chart and act accordingly (try to learn a thing or two that is).

 

Not really OCD:

• Paying your bills before they’re due, and not half an hour before midnight on the day they’re due.
• Coming to work in clean clothes and without pants around your ankles
• Completing tasks given to you at work on time
• Keeping your workspace/home/vehicles clean of empty bottles, Wendy’s wrappers, and half eaten Gummy Bears.
• Keeping track of all your expenses through the month and knowing where every single dollar is going (there’s an app for it, you know).
• Knowing approximate balance of your bank account and making sure you never go near the zero mark. Once again, you can do it on your phone between checking Facebook and lurking on Tinder.

 

Borderline OCD behavior:

• Making sure all of your teeth are same length and occasionally using a file on them to keep them that way.
• Only eating a specific number of cheerios per spoon.
• Portioning the amount of gas you buy so that the gas purchase comes to an even number
• Rearranging goods on shelves at grocery store while grocery shopping to make them look orderly (dang, I actually do that!).
• Washing your neighbors’ cars cause you can’t stand how dirty they’re.

 

Perhaps we can all use a bit of OCD in our lives…

… if it meant paying more attention to our finances. Perhaps then we’d stop paying obscene amount of money banks charge us in overdraft fees. Hopefully, we’d pay less in interest charges as well. May be then we’d have less month at the end of money and “financial bad luck” issues would become less and less prominent.

 

/End of the rant.