If you really want to know what I believe, look at my behavior.

For example, I’ve been saying for years that I wanted to get out of debt, that having debt is not for me. But if you looked at my spending habits, you could see that I didn’t really believe this. I would buy things with credit, and I was totally unreasonable about gifts. I would spend so much at Christmas-time that I was embarrassed to tell my husband. So I got defensive (as usual.)

I’m sure my husband concluded that I didn’t really believe getting out of debt was important.

If you really want to know what someone else believes, look at what he or she does. I once had a client who had three small children. Her husband called himself a “family man” all the time. He worked hard all week “for the family,” and spent every weekend from May to September working on a pit crew in one of the race car circuits. Which meant he left for work on Friday morning and his wife and kids didn’t see him again until Monday after work.

He said his highest priority was his family, but his behavior didn’t match. When I pointed this out to my client, who was trying to follow her own path, she realized that she needed to make some changes in her marriage. Since she worked full-time and had total responsibility for the children, she had no time to even think about how she would like to spend her time.

My client sat down and had a heart-to-heart conversation with her husband one weekend when the kids were busy elsewhere. When she pointed out that his behavior put their family last rather than first, he responded amazingly well. Unlike me, he didn’t get defensive. So now they spend their summer weekends together in the woods or at the lake in the camper they bought with the money he made from working the pit crew.

Back to me: I believe getting out of debt is important. So I’m no longer “renting my money” from the bank (Meadow Devor, a money coach, uses this phrase in her book, Money Love.) I pay for what I buy with money I have. Also, my husband and I got rid of some recurring expenses that we decided were not as important as getting out of debt, like cable and Netflix DVDs. Now, when I go out to dinner with family or friends, I don’t automatically pay for everyone, unless I have the cash in my pocket. I used to see that as being stingy, but now I see it as being honest.

One category of spending I haven’t changed is Charity. I have a very selfish reason for doing this: What goes around comes around.

That’s something I believe, too.

Based on your behavior, what do you believe?