037 | Are Your Thoughts About Money Holding You Back?

The personal finance world puts so much focus on numbers and actions. But looking at our money from a purely mathematical and action-oriented standpoint misses the most crucial part of the picture: your money mindset.

Your results with your money always stem from your thoughts about money. What results are your thoughts leading to?

In this episode, we dive into the importance of our thoughts in achieving the money goals we set for ourselves and how to change your thoughts if you’re not getting the results you want.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• the importance of our thoughts in achieving the money goals we set for ourselves
• how to change your thoughts about money

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Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck

25% of households making $150,000+ live paycheck to paycheck

Scraping By On $500,000 A Year: Why It’s So Hard To Escape The Rat Race

Couple who paid their house off in 5 years (I misspoke–only the husband was a teacher. The wife’s salary was “pretty close to the national average.”)

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Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Happy Friday!

How’s it going? I hope you had an amazing week. I hope you are gearing up for a restful weekend, and all the things.

So today I want to talk about our mindset with our money. When we’re thinking about money, we typically think about the actual numbers and the actions that we’re taking with money, right?

We talk about income and expenses and net worth, and spending and saving and investing. And all these things are important, don’t get me wrong.

But personal finance is so much more than the numbers and those actions that we’re taking. Your mindset is the most important factor in managing your money.

I can teach you everything you need to know about personal finance. You can read all the books and all the things, but until your mind is in the right place, you’re not going to see the progress you want to make.

How many books and websites and videos, podcasts and such are there out there about money? There’s literally thousands of resources available that teach us how to manage our money.

But still 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And that includes 25% of households making $150,000 or more.

I read this story years ago, it was a couple who was, I want to say the article said “scraping by,” and they were making half a million dollars a year. I don’t know if it was true, but I will find it and link it up in the show notes, which you can find at rhothomas.com/37 for this episode. And by the way, the show notes for each episode are always at rhothomas.com slash the episode number in case you didn’t know that.

But anyway, why do you think that is? Why do you think that a couple making $500,000 a year would be struggling? How are so many six figure households struggling with money?

It’s because it’s not about the money. It’s about our thoughts about money, our money mindset, our beliefs.

I’ve told you before that our thoughts ultimately drive our results. So the spending and saving and investing that I mentioned before, are actions that we can take in response to our emotions and those emotions come from your thoughts.

And those aren’t the only actions, of course. Some people might overspend or run up a bunch of debt or drain their savings or even avoid looking at your finances altogether. The avoidance is an inaction, right, that you’re taking in response to feelings about money.

All of those actions are driven by certain feelings. And we have all kinds of feelings about money: sufficient, overwhelmed, confident, stressed, hopeless, abundant, determined, right? The list goes on.

Different feelings lead to different actions and different results. So there are people who feel sufficient with their money, even though they make less than some other people.

I told you earlier about the couple who was scraping by on half a million dollars a year, but I’ve also told you before about a teacher couple that I came across who paid their house off in five years.

And I haven’t talked to either of these couples of course but I’d be willing to bet that the teachers feel a lot more sufficient with their money, than the $500k couple.

We often think that money causes our feelings, but it doesn’t. It’s always our thoughts.

So thoughts like: I know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. Money is hard. Money is easy. I don’t have enough money. I’ll always be in debt.

All of those thoughts are going to lead to certain results with money. Your ultimate money results always come down to your dominant thoughts about money, those thoughts that you practice over and over.

And the brain is designed to be efficient so it will keep offering up the same thoughts out of habit. And if we’re not paying attention, we’ll accept those thoughts as true and not question them.

But if those thoughts aren’t serving us, if they’re leading to results we don’t want, then we need to question them.

You can choose your thoughts. You can practice new thoughts, which will ultimately lead to different results. So what thoughts are you practicing about money?

You can practice thoughts like you don’t know what you’re doing or you suck at money or you don’t know where to start.

Or you can practice thoughts like I’m gonna figure it out. I’m learning to be good with money. It’s possible to hit my money goal. You literally get to choose.

And note that I didn’t say to practice the opposite thought like “I’m great with money” if you’re coming from the place of thinking you suck.

That’s a mantra, and I don’t think those work because jumping from “I suck at money” to “I’m great with money” is usually too big a leap, and you don’t truly believe it, so then it doesn’t really cause the feeling and the action that you need to get the result that you want.

What you can do though is go to something that’s a step above where you are, that you actually can believe. Something like “I’m going to figure this out.”

And then as you take action from that place, and build the belief that you are figuring it out, then it’ll be easier for you to step up to the belief that you’re great with money over time.

Changing your thoughts takes time, so you can think about it like when you’re losing weight. You don’t go to the gym once and expect everything to be different and you’re going to look different and you’ve lost all this weight. You keep going until you hit your goal right?

So the same is true here. You’ve probably been thinking whatever thought you’re trying to change for a long time, and you have to keep practicing your new thought until it becomes the thought that your brain automatically goes to.

But as you do, like as you keep practicing that thought, you change your thoughts, you have this new default way of thinking about money, then ultimately you’re going to change your results with money, as well.

And if you need help, this is part of the work I do with my coaching clients, so head to rhothomas.com/coaching. Let’s set up a call, and we can chat about how coaching can help.

Okay, so let’s recap.

1. Your mindset is the most important factor in managing your money. Having more money or even having more knowledge about money won’t help if your mindset isn’t in the right place.

2. Your thoughts cause certain feelings which drive certain actions which lead to certain results.

3. Your ultimate money results will always come from your dominant thoughts about money. If you want different results, you have to change your thoughts.

4. Changing your thoughts takes time. So just like with working out and losing weight, you can’t practice a new thought once and expect to see a change overnight.

Okay, friend, that’s it for this week’s episode. Join me over in our private Facebook community, and let’s talk more about money mindset and changing your thoughts to get different results. You can find us at rhothomas.com/community.

If you got value from today’s episode please share with a friend who you think would also benefit. If you share on social media, don’t forget to tag me. My handle is @iamrhothomas, and I hang out most on Instagram.

Please subscribe to the show on whatever platform you’re listening on and don’t forget to leave a rating or review. Those reviews especially help the show to get seen by more people, and I greatly appreciate every one.

Okay friend, as we close out, I pray that you will take some time this week to examine your thoughts about money.

I pray that you will put in the time to change your thoughts if you’re not getting the results you want with your money.

And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.