194 | The Key to Financial Breakthrough

Everything we do with our money stems from what we believe about money and the best use for it. That means to experience a breakthrough with your finances, you need to shift your beliefs about your finances.

In this episode, I share the belief shift and subsequent breakthrough that led to me paying off almost $500,000 of debt and building wealth.

• • how to achieve financial breakthrough
  • the breakthrough in my life that led to me paying off almost $500,000 of debt and building wealth
  • the importance of shifting the way you view money

Episode 186: The Most Important Thing to Do With Your Money in 2024

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 financial breakthrough, how to achieve a breakthrough with your finances. Everything that we do with our money is a result of what we believe about money and the best use for it. So when we are spending all of our money on various items and experiences and all of that is because we believe those things are more valuable than the money or that having a certain lifestyle is more valuable than the money when we are saving 10% of every check is because we believe that what you’re supposed to do to be financially stable. When we do whatever it is. It’s because we believe something about money or something about the best way to handle it. We have talked before about shifting how you view your money and what you believe the primary purpose of your money is, that was all about not viewing money just as a means to pay bills and buy stuff, right? It’s using your money or viewing your money as a way to build wealth to make more money. And so go back and check out episode 186 If you want to hear more about that. But anyway, like I said, everything that we do with our money is a result of what we believe about our money and so to get a breakthrough to have a financial breakthrough. You just need one thing that changes your beliefs about your money forever. I’ll give you an example from my own life. My biggest financial breakthrough came when I learned about people making less than me who were building wealth and retiring. I had learned like most people that you go to school to get a good job, you pay your bills on time you save some for the future. And then after doing that for 40 or 50 years you retire. So I have an operating the way that people typically operate with their money based on those beliefs. Like I didn’t have any sort of strategy or specific plan or anything like that. Like that was my plan. I was just going along live in live spending saving a little I believed that wealth was just for like the celebrity type people or the big business owners. And I didn’t know that there were people who made what I would call regular money, who were building wealth. So it never occurred to me that I could do it until I came across stories of other people doing it. One of the first stories that really shifted my mindset was about this couple. They were teachers and they wanted for one of them to be able to stay home once they had kids and so this couple on teacher salaries, bought a house and pay the house off in like five years or something like that. And they took out the biggest expense that most people have every month. When they did that then they were able to easily cover the rest of their living expenses on just that one teacher salary. And so one person quit and stayed home with their kids and you know all that they lived out their plan. They were doing just fine on that single teacher salary. That’s a different mindset, right? Like that’s a different way of thinking about money than most people think about it. And so when I saw that story, I was like, wow, like these people make much less than I made. I was in big law at the time I was making six figures and teachers generally don’t make six figures or at least I don’t know, any teachers who make six figures. Typically within the school system. We don’t pay our teachers very well and so I’m seeing these teachers who do this thing that seemed impossible to me or something I had never heard of before, like seem far outside the realm of possibility and they did it. It’s like okay, that’s interesting. And then I come across people who are in other jobs like not teachers, but still not making the kind of money that I was making. They made like an average salary 50,000 75,000 A year or something like that. But they had money money, like way more money than I had, right? We were still at a negative net worth at that point. Because we still had all our student loans. We had no strategy for moving our finances forward. And there were these people with these regular salaries with seven figure net worths and some of them were even like full out retiring and hadn’t even hit 50 yet. And again, it was just a different mindset like that teacher couple, right. They changed what they were doing with their money. So that’s when I realized that it’s not about how much you make, it’s about what you do with the money you make. That was a huge breakthrough for me, because if these people on teacher salaries on average American salaries, could do things like pay off their house or build a seven figure net worth and get to the point they didn’t have to work anymore. If they could do it. I could do it too. That was huge. That shifted the way that I thought about my money. I stopped seeing money just as a way to buy more stuff or go out to eat or go shopping or whatever else. And you know, I saved a little bit here and there or whatever. And I started thinking about it in terms of buying freedom and having more control in my life because that was something that I felt like I didn’t have like around this time that I was finding these people the whole reason I was even searching for this information in the first place was when we had had our first child I wanted to go part time at my firm. They offer a reduced hours plan where you can do a percentage of billable hour for that same percentage of your salary. And so I was interested in the reduced hours especially when my son was so young. I wanted to work less. I was fine with making less. But our bank account was not fine with me making less right it just wasn’t going to work out financially we couldn’t afford to do it. Before that point. We didn’t have a strategy for our finances. There was no real insight into what was going on with our finances. It was just like, Okay, there’s money in here and we can spend it right we had the fortune of having enough money that we were able to do most things that we wanted to do without much thought or without having strategy. And now to be clear, I started my legal career 10 years ago making 135 So it’s not like what big law people are making now. But it was a great salary for me and my husband was a resident at the time. So it’s not gonna become like huge, huge money, but it was a lot of money to us. And it was our first real jobs. But anyway, all that to say, I shifted the way that I thought about my money and the purpose for my money. And I realized that there were people who just thought about money differently, who looked at their money differently and accordingly, they did different things with their money. So that’s when I started getting really intentional about where we were financially and where we were headed. The way we have been managing our money to that point had not been with an eye toward building wealth and creating freedom and all of that, right. The way we have been managing our money before was just basically to make it to the month like we were contributing to our retirement accounts but beyond that we didn’t have any sort of plan or strategy. Being exposed to people who were building wealth and creating freedom on regular salaries changed the way I thought about my money, and it made me want to do that as well. And so we set out on this journey to do just that. Right. We created this plan to move our finances forward each month. And the whole point of me telling you all of that is when we can shift the way we think about money when our beliefs about money change when our beliefs about what’s possible with our money change. That’s where we experienced breakthrough. When I believe that it was possible for me to build wealth on the salary I was making. I shifted the things I was doing with my money. Changing the way you think about money will change everything for you. It’s truly the difference between treading water staying in the same place month after month and intentionally moving yourself forward and building toward wealth every month. All it takes is one new belief to completely change the trajectory of your finances. So hopefully this episode helps you with that. All right, so that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second share this episode with a friend or two that helps us to get this information in the hands of more lawyers who need it and 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 a life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.