Late night HGTV...I don't know the name of the episode, but it involved two young girls trying to salvage their $6000 security deposit.

They had a cat and a dog and neither were well trained and had ruined the carpet. The girls were determined to replace the nasty carpeting with laminate flooring before the landlord came to inspect the apartment. They spent 4 days and $3000 all told, per the epilogue, when they could have replaced the carpet, including installation, for $500.

The video chronicled their failed attempts to do the job by themselves, the need to call in professionals and the point here, the vast amount of motivation they had to outdo themselves getting the job done, as the tv show, repeatedly emphasized, before they lost their security deposit and their home.

Their belief that they could possibly lose a $6000 security deposit over $500 worth of carpeting and be evicted, to boot, was probably unfounded on a legal basis, number one. Granted, the carpet was nasty (it took them 5 hours to clean the floor after ripping up the carpet and throwing it off the balcony - again, probably longer than was necessary had they used the right cleaning supplies).

But their fear, took them to another level. Without planning, without thinking it through, without calculating their capability to do the job or effectively gauging the necessity to call in professionals long before they did... they reacted, in fear, and spent way too much, protecting against a relatively nonexistent threat.

Not that they didn't have to do something, just that they didn't have to spend $3000 of something.

Lesson Number One: If you want to be No More Prey! you cannot allow yourself to make financial decisions while in a state of fear, particularly compounded with confusion and sleep deprivation.

Financial decisions need to be made based on fact and logic.

If you don't have enough information to feel like you are making a decision calmly and rationally, you don't have enough information to escape predation, either by another party or your own irrationality.

Seek competent advise before you spend money - it will save you every time.

Reality Check: Following the advice above is harder than it looks. Money is like a fly strip for all kinds of emotions and depending on what was buzzing by when you developed your early beliefs about money, you will have more or less trouble being completely logical when it comes to financial decisioning.