217 | Hope Is Not a Strategy

Being hopeful may seem like a good thing. But too many lawyers approach their finances with hope and nothing else.

Hope is not enough to achieve your financial goals.

In this episode, let’s talk about why hope isn’t enough and a more productive approach to your finances.

• • my approach to preparing for the bar

  • approaching our finances with hope

  • why hope is not enough

  • how to handle your finances beyond hope

     

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You’re listening to Wealthyesq. 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 hope. Hope is a word that gets thrown around a lot without real thought, so I wanted to ignore it a little bit, and I want to start with a story about my journey to the bar exam. Picture it, Atlanta, 2014. I’m fresh out of law school. I had a job lined up. The only thing left to do was pass the bar exam. I bought the Barbri prep course because somebody I looked up to in law school said that’s the one that she took. She passed. I figured passed. I figured it was good. And for anyone who didn’t get it, I don’t know if Kaplan was similar, but the way it was set up was there were these live classes that you could go to, and then it also had online lessons where you went through the materials and answer practice questions and things like that. And it had a whole timeline laid out with exactly what to do each day, from when you started the program until you took the exam. I did everything. To do. I went to the live class, and mornings, they went until about lunchtime, and then I would leave the class. I ate lunch, and then I went to the library and did online lessons until around 3pm and then I drove to Starbucks or another local coffee shop near my apartment to be Atlanta traffic, and I did more lessons and questions until about six at which point I went home and had dinner and hung out with my then fiance, now husband. I that was my routine all summer 14. And guess what? I passed. I followed the strategy that Barbri laid out for me. I, you know, created my own strategy of how I was going to execute what Barbri told me to do, and I passed. Now, imagine if the story was a little different. Imagine that instead of following the strategy that I just told you about for studying for the bar I graduated. I didn’t do any sort of prep course or anything like that. I didn’t follow any study strategy exam, and I hope that I passed probably a different outcome. I mean, maybe I would have passed, but it probably would have turned out a little bit differently. The point there is that’s how a lot of us approach our finances. I hope I can build my savings, I hope I can pay off my credit card. I hope I can go on vacation, I hope whatever, but we don’t put any sort of strategy in place to make those things happen. According to Merriam Webster, hope is defined as a verb meaning to cherish a desire with anticipation to want something to happen or be true, to desire with expectation of obtainment or fulfillment, to expect confidence. The noun form is defined as desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment, and expectation of fulfillment or success. It’s not a strategy for your finances. We can’t just really want something to happen, or have a desire for this thing to happen and expect that it will. That’s not how money works. That’s not how life works. So instead of just wanting or expecting something to happen, we have to create and execute a strategy that moves us toward the thing we’re hoping for. That’s not to say that hope is all bad, but hope is not enough by itself. When you’re out here just hoping, you’re putting results on your finances outside of yourself, you are expecting something to happen, or wishing for something to happen, but you’re not taking any responsibility for making it happen. You’re wishing and dreaming, but you’re not taking tangible steps to get yourself to the goal you have. I talk about recognizing the authority you have over your finances, because so often we act as if our finances are just happening to us, nothing we can do about it. But that’s not true. You have a lot of control over the things you do with your finances, whether you achieve your goals or not. Hope is not going to cut it, right? You didn’t just hope to get into law school. You had to study and get the grades and prepare for the LSAT and fill out the applications and write the essays and all that stuff. You didn’t just hope to pass your classes in law school. You had to read the cases and outline and study and do practice exams. You didn’t just hope to pass the bar. You have to study for it. You have to prepare. Now, in practice, you don’t just hope that you win at trial, or that your mindset the stock purchase agreement gets drafted, or whatever you do the things you need to do and take, the steps you need to take to achieve that goal. Yes, sometimes there are circumstances outside of your control, but you do everything within your control. You have to take that same approach with your finances. Hope is not enough stop hoping that you’ll be able to save, hoping that you’ll be able to get out of debt, hoping you’ll be able to take in, hoping you’ll be able to buy a house. Stop hoping. Start strategizing. What is the goal? How much time are you giving yourself to achieve it? How much time do you have to achieve it? What are the smaller goals that lead to that ultimate goal? What are the steps you need to take to achieve that goal? What are you going to do to get there? What are you going to change to be able to save that amount or pay off that amount of debt? Let’s just our hands and hope it happens. We have to take steps to make it happen. The good thing about personal finance is that money is numbers. It’s math. So we can very clearly see what needs to happen to achieve our goals, because we can see the numbers. We can divide our goal over the amount of time needed to achieve it, and we can figure out how much we need to save, or how much we need to pay off, or how much we need to set aside, or whatever, to achieve that goal in that time frame. If something else comes along like you get some sort of windfall, you get a bonus, you get a refund, you get a raise. Like those things are great, but we can rely on those as our means to achieve the goal, because those things may or may not happen. So strategize is what you have now, looking at the state of your finances right now, what do you need to do to do to be able to achieve your goal. What steps can you take right now to achieve the goal that you have? I always ask my clients within their power to get the results they want. With coaching, you can ask yourself, What’s within your power to get the results you want to because your finances are largely within your control. There might be things that affect your finances that are outside of you. I acknowledge that, but overwhelmingly, your finances are within your control. Look at your goals, create a strategy to move yourself forward with your finances. Execute that strategy. Hope is not a strategy. Hope by itself is a recipe for failure and disappointment. Stop hoping, start strategizing. Make those things happen. All right, so that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second share this episode with a friend or two. Who do you think would find it useful so we can empower more lawyers to manage their money better. 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 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.