115 | Married to the Money

Your relationship with money is no different than any other relationship in your life. Many of the same principles apply.

If your money were a person, how would you rate the way you treat that person? How would you describe the kind of relationship you have?

In this episode, let’s talk about some of the practices we implement to have thriving relationships with other people and how those same practices apply to our relationships with money, as well.

Topics Discussed

• thinking of your money as an actual person
• the things we say vs. the things we do
• grand gestures and consistent small actions
• ignoring and neglecting your money
• the way you talk about your money
• making mistakes in your relationship

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Resources mentioned

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If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call. 

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Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

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 your relationship with money. So the way my lawyer brain works, it can be hard for me to get into some of the more woowoo or squishy concepts like this. And I find that relating it to something I’m more familiar with or more comfortable with helps. So I was thinking about how we can talk about your relationship with money in a way that you’ve never been like mine you would be able to get into and I was thinking about how there are a lot of parallels in our relationships with money and our relationships with people. We have an extended relationship with money kind of like a marriage or a long term partnership. So it makes sense that some of the same things apply. So for this conversation, I want you to imagine that your money is an actual person that you have a relationship with and as we talk through some of these things, think about if there are things that you might want to do differently in how you treat that person. For example, a big one is a lot of us say things that sound good. I want to save more, right? I’m gonna be debt free. I’m going to be better with my spending. I want to be wealthy, but the things we actually do, rather than things we say speak volumes. And just like any other relationship is not necessarily about grand gestures, right? It’s the little everyday things that go into maintaining a relationship. So think about if your spouse or significant other tells you they love you, they care about you, but they never make time for you. They’re always too busy doing other things. They only come around and eat something or maybe they do the dishes for you every so often but it’s radio silence in between and you’re not paying attention at all, that relationship probably won’t last very long. When you think about your money it’s the same so you can say all day that you want to manage your money better, you can move chunks of money to savings every now and then or make a random one off debt payment. But it’s what you do with your money in the little moments from day to day, right. Those are the things that matter most those are the things that lead to the progress that you want to make with your money. So it’s not about doing this great thing one time, but about consistently doing things to care for your money. Just like you probably won’t stick around in a relationship where the other person doesn’t pay attention to you. The same is gonna be true for your money. Think about if your partner or friend never checks in with you to see what’s going on with you or you don’t do regular date night or spend time together. Is that how you’re treating your money? Are you checking in with your money so you know what’s going on with it? Do you have regular time that you’re looking at the status of your finances? If you’re not checking in with your money and paying attention to it regularly, then your money is not gonna stay around. So if you’re not spending time with it, you’re gonna end up losing it. That’s why so many people in America are living paycheck to paycheck. That’s how we end up with so much credit card debt. Because we’re spending more than we can afford to pay all because we’re not paying attention. You wanna actually be looking at what’s going on with your finances, looking at how much money you’ve brought in, looking at how much you’re spending in different categories, whether that’s how you wanna be using your money, looking at how you’re doing on your goals. Paying attention. Right? All of these things are going to be huge in managing your money better because if you’re not treating your money well, you’re not maintaining that relationship, then it’s not gonna stick around. Another thing is thinking about how you talk about your money. So think about this. Would you tell your partner that they’re never enough? Or would you stay in a relationship where your partner said you’re never enough? Or that you’re too complicated? Or that you only create more problems? Or that you stress them out? Think about how we often talk about money. If money were an actual person, the way people talk about it would be pretty bad. Those things that you say or think about money create your experience of money. Your entire relationship with money is colored by those things. And we can easily choose nicer things to say and think about money. We can focus on the positive things money brings to our lives. For example, I’m grateful that my money pays for a safe place for my family to live and food to eat. Versus I’m stressed out about this thing or money is too complicated and I don’t know what to do with it. How much different would your relationship be if you focused on the things you’re grateful for in your partner versus always criticizing and focusing on the what’s wrong and always telling them how unhappy you are with them. The same is true here. You’ll have a much better relationship with money, a much better experience of money, if you can reframe the way you think about and talk about it. And finally, no relationship is perfect. You make mistakes. We all do. So if you’re less than ideal in your relationship one day, you don’t show up exactly the way that you would like to in your marriage or your relationship, you make a mistake, you don’t automatically assume that you’re getting divorced or that the relationship is over right. You work it out. You try again. The next time you run up on a similar situation, you’re better equipped to handle it. The same can be true with your money so if you make a mistake with your money and you get off track, that doesn’t mean you immediately give up and forget the plan. You just dust yourself off and you try again and you keep moving forward and you learn from those mistakes. Those setbacks are opportunities for growth in a relationship. They help you to figure out how you wanna move forward with your relationship and what you wanna do differently going forward. Just like one disagreement doesn’t mean you give up on your whole relationship, one misstep with your finances doesn’t mean you give up on your whole plan. Overall, if we take some of the same concepts, principles, whatever we wanna call them that we use in our relationships with people and apply them to our relationships with money, we would have better results with our money and we wouldn’t have such a difficult experience with it. So if you are ready to uplevel your relationship with money, I can help you do just that. Head to rhothomas.com/call, let’s set up some time to chat. Alright, so that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn rho Thomas or Instagram at I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which help more people to find it. And please think of a friend or two who you think could use this information and share this episode with them. 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.