187 | Generosity at Every Level

One of the biggest drivers of my financial journey has been the opportunity to be more generous.

Improving your finances will increase your capacity for generosity, but it’s possible to make room for generosity at each stage of your financial journey.

In this episode, let’s talk about the importance of generosity and some of my personal experiences with it.

• • treating my family to a ski trip
  • making room for financial generosity in your budget
  • my desire to support the unhoused population in Atlanta and how my actions and finances didn’t reflect that
  • giving to my church and other charitable organizations
  • questioning the belief that you’re not in a position to give
  • the impact of your financial journey on others

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 generosity. Over the holidays, my husband and I had the opportunity to treat my family to a ski trip in Denver. It’s something that I have been wanting to do for years, not the ski trip specifically, but just taking a trip where our families just had to get there and we covered the rest and it felt really good to finally achieve that goal. It’s one of those things where we probably could have technically done it sooner, like we technically had the money to do it earlier, but we wouldn’t have been in as strong of a financial position to do it at that time, if that makes sense. So like we would have been doing it but it would have been a bit of a stretch and probably would have been stressful with this trip. We planned for it. We had the money ready to go. We were able to do it and it wasn’t a stretch. It wasn’t a strain. There was no concern about spending the money. So we got a big Airbnb for everybody and we pay for everybody’s lift tickets to go skiing and we pay for most of the meals and it was just a really nice experience and really nice to be with our family. I was thinking about how generosity has been a big driver for me in our financial journey. So being able to do more for other people. That’s really important to me. Sometimes that looks like being generous with your time because the money isn’t available, but I’m specifically talking about financial generosity when I’m thinking about my driver. Financially that has meant sometimes giving on a smaller scale than I would like but you have to start somewhere. I believe money only amplifies our current habits. So generally, if you’re not in the habit of giving now of being generous financially now, I don’t think you’ll magically give all this money or do things for other people. When you start making more when you have more money available. I felt convicted on that point recently because I live in Atlanta and we have a large unhoused population like in some parts of downtown especially you can drive down the street and see so many people just weighing out on the sidewalk or in tent under the bridges. And it makes me really sad and one of my biggest goals is to help end homelessness in Atlanta, and it’s been on my goal list for years is something that I want to do and I know it’s gonna take a lot of money. But until recently, I wasn’t giving to any causes to specifically support that goal. It’s like yes, that’s a great goal. But I don’t have to be in a financial position to completely end homelessness before I at least help. So I set up a recurring monthly gift to one of the organizations here that supports the unhoused population and helps people get back on their feet and I’m just like, why didn’t I do that? sooner? Like why didn’t it occur to me that I could be doing something now. And don’t get me wrong we have been giving throughout our financial journey. So we tithe to our church, which if you don’t know what that means we give 10% of our gross income to our church every month. And that’s something that’s really important to us. If you are a believer, if you’re familiar with the Bible, the only place in the Bible where God tells us to test him is in our giving. He says test me in this and see if I don’t throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing you won’t have room enough to receive. But before we started our journey to improve our finances. We felt like we couldn’t afford it. Right. We felt we couldn’t afford to give a full time. And I’ve been in church most of my life and I’ve always given something but it was nowhere near 10%. It would be like $20 here $50 there maybe $100 if I really felt moved by the message. And I remember not too long after my husband and I got married. We were looking for a church home and we visited a church called Passion city here in Atlanta. And the pastor preached one Sunday on the concept of tithing, and it just really changed our perspective on it. I don’t remember exactly what he said. But we started giving 10% of our take home pay not too long after that. And then we built up to 10% of our gross income within the next year or so. And that was 100% an act of faith because we didn’t feel like we had the money to give but somehow we always had enough even as we started growing our family and taking on daycare costs, which was basically another mortgage. And then we also give to other charitable organizations each month on top of the money that we give to our church, although we give to those organizations on a smaller scale. But something that I have noticed over the years is people will often tell me that their faith or a particular cause or being charitable in general is really important to them, but a lot of times their finances don’t reflect that just like with me and the unhoused population here in Atlanta or when we didn’t think that we could tithe. Right they think that they’re not able to give because of where they are financially. And I just think for most people, that’s a mistaken belief. I think if giving is important to you, you can find a way to make room for it because we make room for the things that are important to us. And let me be clear this is not to shame anyone or make anyone feel bad. If you truly don’t have it. You don’t have it and I pray that you’re able to get to a position where you do but I think a lot of times we tell ourselves, we don’t have it like we did early on. But if we were to look at our money, look at where it’s going tweak things a bit, we find that we actually do have it. It’s just one of the trade offs that we make with our money. So the money that’s currently being spent on some things is money that can’t be used for generosity. And so that just comes down to deciding which one is more important. I think we can be generous at every level at every financial level. And again generosity might look different at different stages of your financial journey. It’s gonna look different while you’re in the phase of building an emergency fund or paying off debt versus when you get things under control and you put yourself in a stronger position. I believe one of the rollover benefits of getting your finances in order is the ability to be more generous, a big part of why we’re able to provide financial support for the organizations that we do. And for the other giving we do is because all of our financial stuff is taken care of your financial journey not only impacts you it impacts the other people around you in your life and in your community. And I think as we give we also open ourselves up to receive more. I heard someone compare it to living life with your fists tightly closed, punching everything you’ve got versus living life with open hands and being willing to give what you have to help others who need help. When your fists are tightly closed, you might be able to hold on to what you have, but you also are not in a position to receive anything. But when your hands are open, you can give and receive freely and I just thought that was a really nice visual so all that to say I think you can be generous at any level. Money doesn’t have to be all about paying off debt and saving. We can use our money to impact others whether that’s in a fun way, like the ski trip that we took with our family or even taking someone to lunch or in a different way like helping people who are in need or giving to your church. We have the capacity the ability to be more generous now. But we’ll have even more capacity for generosity, the more we improve our finances. So that’s just something that was on my heart to talk to you about and I hope it’s helpful for you as you move through your financial journey. Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. If you’ve gotten to this point and you liked what you heard, take a second and leave a review for the episode. It really helps with getting this podcast in front of more lawyers so they can get the information they need to manage their money better. And as always, I 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 a life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.