193 | How to Get Better Results with Your Finances

You’re not getting better results with your finances because you’re not spending time on the things that would yield better results.

We often put a lot of time and attention toward things that don’t move the needle in our finances. When you put more time and attention to the things that do, your results will follow.

In this episode, let’s talk about the things we tend to focus on in our finances and where to focus instead to get better results.

• • the input and output of better financial results
  • the hierarchy of problems we can worry about
  • real-life examples of focusing on better problems
  • the impact of focusing on better problems vs. the scrimping and saving mindset

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about how to get better results with your finances. And when I’m talking about results, what am I talking about? I am talking about what you see in your finances the outcomes right the money saved the debt paid off the net worth change. Your results are the output of the actions that you take with your finances. And so if we want a better output, we need a better input. The input to get better results is taking action to solve better problems. There are two categories of problems in the world. So there’s problems that you can’t do anything about in problems that you can do something about, and one of the biggest issues that lawyers and people in general have with their money. is worrying about problems that they can’t do anything about. Worrying about stuff that you can’t control is the biggest waste of time and energy, like you personally can’t do anything about the economy. You can’t do anything about interest rates rising. You can’t control if layoffs happen at your job, right. There are so many things that you can’t control related to your finances, this whole bucket of problems that we can’t do anything about and yet we want to direct all of our attention there. On the other hand, there are plenty of problems that we can do something about. We want to look at those things that we can control, focusing on those problems solving those things is better, right? It’s a better use of our time and energy. But even within the realm of things that you can do something about there are better problems to focus on. When people first start working on improving their finances. Usually the first place they want to go is all this minutia, looking at all this stuff that doesn’t really move the needle and completely ignoring the bigger stuff that wouldn’t then you know more so using a personal example, early on in our money journey I would spend like 20, 30 minutes trying to find discounts and stuff like that on like groceries or other shopping that I was doing. And I remember specifically there was this app that you could upload your grocery receipt and get reimbursed for certain items. And after all that time that I was putting it I might say like $5 We go to the grocery store every week. So if I say $5 Every trip we would save a total of $20 a month, right? That’s not moving the needle match for anybody, but especially for us because back then we had over $670,000 of debt, that $20 was not doing anything. And that’s not to say that I’m against saving money or finding discounts or anything like that. Like we still use our grocery store shopper card. And so they’ll have you know, deals and discounts just for being a loyalty member. And it doesn’t take any time to just swipe the card or to connect it to the grocery app. I’m doing my grocery order. And you know, we get whatever discounts they’re offering for loyalty members. But the point is there are other moves that we could have made back then other than trying to find some grocery store deals that would have made a much bigger difference. So one thing that moved the needle more was getting rid of my $400 car payment right $400 A month is a lot better than $20 a month. Both the grocery store coupon and the car payment are within my control, like getting rid of the car payment was a better problem to solve than trying to save a couple dollars at the grocery store. Another example that comes up is people will be spending a few $100 on stuff like takeout or going out to eat or shopping or stuff like that. Let’s say even gets $500 a month that they’re spending and they’ll be like, Oh, I just spend so much I need to cut back. But then when we look at it and we look at their full spending for the last month, they’re spending half their income on their rent or their mortgage. Like the reason that you’re struggling that you’re having trouble with your finances is not your shopping or your eating out is because half of your income is on top just for housing. So that’s the problem that want to focus on getting into a cheaper place getting a roommate or renting a room out or bringing in more income. All of those kinds of things are going to move the needle a lot more than I’m gonna take all this fun thing that I like so I can save a couple $100 When you solve better problems, you get better results. Paying off my car gave me much better results than saving $5 here and there on groceries for my clients that had their housing costs ticking up half their income when they moved in with a friend or significant other or they just moved to a cheaper place. They freed up these huge chunks of money each month that they could then use for whatever their goal was right saving or paying off debt or whatever it was. That moved the needle a lot more than I saved $200 because I cut back on going out to eat. I think we get caught up in the scrimping and saving and all of that because that’s what a lot of mainstream society tells us to do. And so we think that’s what it means to be better with money right? Like I have to click coupons and find deals and save a few dollars at the grocery store and stop going to Starbucks and start going out to eat or whatever else but we overlook these huge opportunities to move the needle in our finances more and make more progress. So make sure that when you’re looking to get better results with your finances that you are one focusing on things that you can control. Right not the government not the interest rates that your employer. Things that you can control and then two doing the things that you can control that actually make a difference and move the needle, not these little piddly things to save a couple bucks here and there, right? Bigger things give you bigger results and that’s what we’re going for. All right, so that is it for this week’s episode. If you haven’t done so already, please leave a quick rating for the podcast. It just takes a couple of seconds scroll down tap the five stars and that will help us to get this information in front of more lawyers. I greatly appreciate your support. As we close out friend I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently. Week after week. You’ll 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.