Watch what you do with an unexpected twenty bucks. Your spending is a quiet diary.

What you do with unplanned money reports on you more honestly than any intention does. Planned spending reflects what you think you ought to want, while a loose twenty goes toward whatever actually pulls at you: food, a friend, a thing you have been circling for months, or nothing at all. A few of those in a row add up to a fairly accurate record of your priorities.

Look back at the last few times money turned up unexpectedly and write down where it went. Skip the grading. Just ask whether that is what you would have chosen deliberately.